4 Ways to Download Songs from Apple Music to MP3

You may have collected many amazing music tracks from your Apple Music library. Suppose you want to listen to these songs with your favorite MP3 player, music box, or you want to burn them to a CD. In that case, you may find it impossible to do so because the music downloaded from Apple Music is protected by digital rights management (DRM).

In this article, I will show you a few workarounds to download songs from Apple Music without DRM protection, a.k.a., removing DRM protection from Apple Music.

If you export the music downloaded from your iPhone to PC, you will find the Apple Music tracks are in protected.m4p format. You can only use iTunes to play them with your account logged in. To enjoy the DRM-free versions of Apple Music tracks, you use one of the following methods to unlock the Apple Music DRM.

Disclaimer

All these methods are for personal or educational use only.

You should not use any of these tools to pirate or distribute music.

The methods below are either recording songs in Apple Music or downloading from a different source.

Some of the methods may be illegal to use in your country, so be informed.

Method 1: Apple Music Downloader Shortcut for iPhone or Mac

If you are using iOS 13 or later versions, you have the Shortcuts app pre-installed on your iPhone or iPad. I love to use the Shortcuts app very much, so I have created a shortcut to download songs from Apple Music to MP3 or M4A. I have also created a shortcut to download Apple Podcats to MP3 in case you are interested.

At first, you may use other pre-made shortcuts. As long get to know it better, you can create your own custom shortcuts, which is very fun. If your Mac is running macOS 12 or newer versions, you can also get this shortcut to convert Apple Music to MP3. You can refer to the steps below to see how it works.

Step 1. Get this Apple Music Downloader shortcut by clicking the button above. I updated this shortcut on iOS 17, so it may not work very well on some older iPhone or iPad models.

Step 2. Within Apple Music, tap Share Song on the track that you want to download and then select this shortcut to run. You can also copy the song link to run this shortcut.

Step 3. Once the download is complete, you can select a folder in the Files app to save the music.

In the shortcut setup, you can input “1” to include artwork and save downloaded music in M4A, which is the default choice. If you prefer MP3 format, you can input “0” without artwork. This way, it will download music faster.

Shortcuts app is so powerful and limitless. You can find many useful pre-made shortcuts. For instance, I have also made a shortcut to download music from Spotify. To find shortcuts, you can use this shortcuts search engine to find good shortcuts that you want.

Method 2: Remove DRM from Apple Music tracks

If you search for Apple Music DRM removal, you will many so-called Apple Music DRM removal software. Before you can use any of these tools, you need to have iTunes installed and logged in with your account that has Apple Music subscription.

There is one thing that makes TuneMobie stand out and that is the converting speed, 16 times faster than others. When you “converting” Apple Music songs with other Apple Music Converter tools, you will find the song is playing. You need more time to “convert” one song than the song duration time.

If you try this Apple Music Converter, you will find out that it converts a song in no time. By default, it converts at 5X faster speed. You can also adjust the speed from 1X ~ 16X as you like.

You can convert Apple Music to MP3, FLAC, M4A, or other formats. If that’s okay with you, I recommend TuneMobie to you from all these tools I tried. You can get the lifetime license now.

Method 3: A workaround to Download Apple Music Playlist

If you want to download an Apple Music playlist with high music quality, this workaround is for you. There is an open source program on Github, Streamrip. It allows you to download a playlist from LastFM via other sources like Tidal, Qobuz, SoundCloud, YouTube, etc.

Streamrip is a command line based program. If you are not familiar with it, you can follow the step by step guide below:

Step 1. Create an account on last.fm.

Step 2. Click on your profile icon and select Playlists on the next page.

Step 3. On your playlists page, click Import. Then paste your Apple Music playlist link.

Step 4. Install Python 3 on your Windows PC or Mac. For Windows users, be sure to check the option “Add Python to Path” while installing. For Mac users, refer to the video below.

Step 5. Type “cmd” and press Enter to open a command prompt. Run the following command in the command prompt.

pip install streamrip --upgrade

Step 6. Go to LastFM, copy the link to the imported playlist and run the following command to download it.

rip lastfm https://www.last.fm/user/chrunos/playlists/12146879

By default, Streamrip will search download music from Qobuz first. If you don’t have Qobuz subscription, add a parameter “–source=[streaming music service]”. For example, I have a Tidal subscription, so I type the command below:

rip lastfm --source=tidal https://www.last.fm/user/chrunos/playlists/12146879

You can change it to Deezer, SoundCloud, YouTube, etc. You don’t need a SoundCloud account to download music from SoundCloud in high quality.

Method 4: Apple Music Downloader Telegram Bot

If you use Telegram, the chatting app, you can add a bot @GlomaticoAppleMusicBot to download music from Apple Music. This bot allows you to listen to and download songs from Apple Music. You can also download music videos, albums, and playlists by sending the URL.

To start using this bot, simply send /start and follow the instructions. You can also use /help to see the list of commands and features. Besides, you can also get other Telergram bots to download music from Spotify, Tidal, Amazon, etc.

Conclusion

With these four methods, you can easily download songs from Apple Music without DRM protection. Hope you find it helpful. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments. Now, it’s your turn, which of these methods are you going to try first?