Digital Rights Management and Windows Media Audio Files

General Help
#1

I have a 100 plus old Windows Media Audio files which are ‘protected’ by Digital Rights Management and therefore can’t be played by VLC or any other media players. (I’m a songwriter and some of these ‘protected’ files are actually my own songs!)

The WMA files can’t be converted to mp3 or any other type of file because apps such as Sound Converter and Audacity don’t recognise them.

There are a number of DRM removal apps available for Windows (they’re advertised as Freeware but it seems there are hidden costs).

I can’t find any DRM removal tools for Linux.

Has anyone got any suggestions

#2

If you still have a copy of Windows around, launch Windows Media Player and disable DRM - it's one thing I always did before adding my CD collection to the Music Folder. Or rather, don't apply the option when first setting up.

You could try downloading an old copy of XP and see if that works like I have outlined, but not guarantees:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject:"windows+XP"