You are considering buying a Microsoft Zune as you broke your iPod or had your iPod stolen. And you bought a lot of songs from iTunes store because you had money left on your iTunes gift card. You still want to enjoy those purchased songs on your Zune MP3 player. Or you own an iPod while your boyfriend/girlfriend has a Zune. And you hope to share the library of M4P music songs purchased from iTunes store under your account with your boyfriend/girlfriend. Here comes the headache! The M4P music you bought from iTunes is DRM-laden! You cannot transfer the iTunes M4P music to the Zune software, not to mention playing the iTunes M4P music on your Zune player.

Yet, there seems to be a solution. You can burn the protected M4P music files to CD-R or CD-RW disc to make an audio CD and then use some CD ripper software to convert the audio CD track back to Zune accepted MP3 or WMA. And iTunes allows you to burn the protected music files to CD-R or CD-RW disc to make a standard audio CD. Sounds a good idea! But it would be a time consuming process if you have a library of iTunes M4P music files ready to be converted to Zune MP3 or WMA. Moreover, the information about the M4P music files like title, artist and album will be lost after burning and ripping back to MP3 or WMA files. So this method is not recommended if you have a big collection of iTunes M4P music files ready to be transferred to your Zune.

I've made a Google search for programs that can convert iTunes M4P music to Zune WMA MP3, and TuneClone Audio Converter attracted my attention. The edge of TuneClone over other similar programs is that it applys the virtual CD burning technology to simulates the burning and ripping process. You just need to burn the iTunes M4P playlist to TuneClone virtual CD burner. Then TuneClone will directly convert the iTunes M4P music list to Zune WMA or MP3 for you. It is very fast and the information about each music song will be preserved perfectly. Below are several key steps to convert iTunes M4P music to Zune MP3 or WMA using TuneClone Audio Converter.

1. Make settings at TuneClone



Click the Setting button at TuneClone. In the pop-up window, you can specify the output folder, output filenames, output format, etc. for the converted MP3 or WMa files.
Tip: You can get the converted music folder by clicking the Folder button after the whole process.

2. Make settings at iTunes



Click Edit -> Preferences... -> Advanced -> Burning. Select TuneClone's virtual CD-RW drive as CD burner. In the Disc Format option, tick Audio CD.
Tip 1: In order to keep the information about the music, the Include CD Text option should be checked.
Tip 2: The most important step is to choose the cd burner. Then the software can convert the music files automatically.

3. Create a playlist

Create a playlist, and then add the iTunes M4P music files you want to convert to Zune WMA or MP3 into the playlist. After the conversion, the WMA or MP3 music folder should be located under the folder you specified at first. The name of the music folder should be the same as that of the iTunes playlist you created.
Tip: It is exceedingly easy and fast when you want to batch convert lots of files.

After you get the output folder, now you can transfer it to your Zune software so as to enjoy the iTunes music on your Zune MP3 player.

As the music in iTunes is encrypted with DRM, you cannot directly put it on any non-Apple MP3 player. The easiest way is to burn the music to an audio CD and then rip it back to Windows Media Player or a similar program as an MP3. Or you can get some software to help you. I use TuneClone to do this. Though not free, it is very well worth a try.

Below is its step by step tutorial about how to get iTunes music converted to MP3:
http://www.tuneclone.com/itunes8-m4p-to-mp3.php