Are bought music downloads convertible to ogg?

[Oreocat]

I prefer ogg files on my Axim, and would like to buy and download some music, however, I'd also like to know if the music can be converted once I have it. I already have a conversion program, what I'm not sure of are the "smart tags" (I think?) or the coding they have that could interfere in changing the file type.

I apologize if this is an obvious question, but I'm not extremely familiar with this type of thing at all.

I'd really appreciate any help anyone can give me.

Thanks,
Oreocat

[Jason Dunn]

Quite often, if a music file is protected by DRM, it won't allow itself to be transcoded. If you prefer OGG for your music, you're probably out of luck...unless you were to go the exteme step of playing the file and recording the audio through WAV playback and re-encoding the output again...

[Nikhil]

It's much simpler than that...What I do with my iTunes-purchased music is burn the songs to CD, then re-rip and re-organize the files for my SmartPhone. The iPod is on my Christmas list this year but for those times when I won't have it, the SmartPhone is perfect. I re-encode to OGG using dBpoweramp.

[Oreocat]

Thanks for the replies !

Jason-I appreciate the information. I was pretty sure that would be the response, I'd heard something about problems with the coding, the DRM (thanks for the name, too :) but was hoping...oh well, I'll check into Nikhil's suggestion though, just in case ^_^

Nikhil-I didn't realize you could do this. Sorry to sound like an idiot, but just to make sure, I can download the music, rip a cd, and then reburn it to my computer without the DRM? And then I could convert it, using dBpoweramp (which I also have :)? This works on music from iTunes? I don't even have a particular site chosen yet, wanted to know if it could be done before spending the money.

Thank you both very much for trying to help,
Oreocat

[Janak Parekh]

Nikhil-I didn't realize you could do this. Sorry to sound like an idiot, but just to make sure, I can download the music, rip a cd, and then reburn it to my computer without the DRM? And then I could convert it, using dBpoweramp (which I also have :)? This works on music from iTunes? I don't even have a particular site chosen yet, wanted to know if it could be done before spending the money.
Yes, you can do this, and with most of all the new purchasing sites. Note that some of them have limitations on how many times you can actually burn to CD (iTunes doesn't, but I know most songs on BuyMusic can be burned only three times), but once you do you're free to rip it in any format.

--janak

[Oreocat]

Oh wonderful!

Thank you very much Janek, for confirming that information. I've got it now, and I'll be sure the check the sites (although I'll probably just stick with iTunes) for their rules on copying the music.

Now to make a list for iTunes.....

Thanks again,

Oreocat