DRM on my music

Hello,
I have a huge Napster collection and recently upgraded to windows 7 only to find out that Napster will not re sync the music i backed up and have recently restored onto my fresh copy of windows 7. (want me to find and re download them all again)

My question is does anyone know how to get Napster to re-add this music to its play list or a program that can play the music and get around the DRM?

i have tried tutorials that mention tunebite. soundtaxi ect... but they all seem to not be able to work with the newer drm.


Thanks in advance!

Going by what I've been reading, Microsoft removed the ability to restore backed up DRM licenses in Windows Media Player 11 and later (Windows 7 has v12). As a result, if the software you used to play the music does not have its own ability to restore the license for music brought in from a previous PC / installation, the music must be obtained again.

As Napster does not seem to have its own support to import the music you downloaded on your previous Windows installation, unfortunately it looks like there is little you can do other than to redownload the collection. Most DRM stripping tools get the decryption key from the DRM license, while others rely on re-recording the music as some player plays it. As the license would have been lost with a fresh Windows installation and you've no way of playing the music, unfortunately there is no way for the DRM removal tools to re-record or decode the music. It's a bit like having a CD collection with a padlock going through the spindle of each disc. If you can't obtain the keys (i.e. recover the license), there's no way of playing them.

Once you re-download the tracks, you should be able to use Tunebite (or another DRM removal tool) to strip the DRM and this is something I would recommend doing to hopefully prevent a repeat of this issue.

This is also why DRM has such a bad reputation and often nicknamed things like "Digital Restrictions Management" or maybe it should now be called "Disallows Recovering Music" or "Digitally Ruined Music".

Wow Thank you for explaining it to me. very informative.

What if i was to load up windows xp and use that? Would it be able to pick the license file off the internet and play the music possibly?(have dual boot setup on a system)

I do have the entire user directory,(my music doc pic) back up. Would the license file be in their somewhere?

Will this work with the latest drm they install on the music(in this case)? All instances that i have read are from 2006-2008.


Yeah she going to hate me for this if i don't recover her music or re-download all of it for her.

The best thing to do here is give it a try to see what happens if you play a tune. I've never used Napster, so I'm not sure how it will work with Napster.

As far as I'm aware of, the DRM content is stored in "\Documents and Settings\All Users\DRM" on a Windows XP PC, so if you have a backup of that folder, you can try pointing a DRM removal tool to this, assuming it has the obtion to select the license files. From what I've read, Microsoft changed its DRM system many times to prevent 3rd party tools accessing the decryption keys, so I'm fully sure if this will work, especially if you had Windows Media Player 11 on that PC.

This is why I'm totally against the use of DRM. It doesn't stop piracy, yet it does affect paying customers.