I. The need for a DRM converter
I like to listen to audiobooks in my car during my commute to work, and am a long-time subscriber to Audible, since before the days they were bought out by Amazon. I have the Audible audiobook app running on my smartphone in my car, over a USB connection. I can also listen to my audiobooks on my PC at home if I log on to Audible and find the audiobook I was listening to.
Audible also allows me to download the audiobooks I paid for, and store them on my own hard disk at home. But at home, I also have a stereo system which takes a USB memory stick and automatically plays MP3 files so I can listen while doing things around my apartment. The problem is, the Audible AAX file format is a DRM-protected format, and is not playable on anything other than computer programs that allow a login to Audible, such as my iTunes application on my desktop. A USB stick plugged into my stereo is not connected to the internet. To play it on my home stereo, I would require the AAX to be stripped of its DRM and converted into a format my stereo system can understand, which for me is generally MP3, M4V, and similar formats.
I am not looking to sell this media for my own profit, nor to do anything else dishonest that would take money away from creators or even Audible. All I want to do is copy my media to a USB stick, walk across my living room, and insert the USB stick into a USB audio/video port on my stereo system, and play the audio file. I don’t think that is too much to ask. I don’t get these insane restrictions with cassette tapes, or with vinyl records, or with music on CD. I can play those on any CD player, record player or cassette player. And I am entitled to do so: I own those cassettes, CDs and records. Nobody dictates what I do with those media. I believe the same should apply to all digital media.
There are many writers who have written much more eloquently about this crazy scheme that can be easily Googled, particularly by Richard Stallman, a proponent of “free” software (free as in “freedom”, not as in “free lunch”). Look him up if you want to know more about this. My general attitude is that I don’t mind paying for software or digital audio or video media; what I don’t like are digital modifications that restrict my freedom as to what I am allowed to do with the media after purchasing it.
II. The search for a solution to this problem: ViWizard
I looked around on the internet, and found a company called ViWizard which sells software that removes DRM from a variety of audio and video media, and converting them into a number of common formats that make them playable on most devices.
ViWizard appears to prefer to sell several small programs that work on one or two file types, such as iTunes audio and movies; another for Audible audiobooks; another one for Spotify; another one for Tidal and so on. If you are in the situation where you require more than one kind of conversion, then you have to make separate purchases for each software. While ViWizard tries to offer bundles, the ones that interested me didn’t appear to be “bundled” the way I expected and lacked information as to what other software it was equivalent to. Generally speaking, ViWizard lacks a genuine one-stop solution that would naturally be more expensive, but I am sure there are people that would gladly pay for that software, myself included.
In my case, I purchased a lifetime license for the iTunes converter. But a year ago, I had a monthly license for Audible, and have done dozens of conversions into MP3, so I am able to relate my experience of the Audible converter.
I cancelled the subscription to ViWizard because I hadn’t used the software in several months after initially converting nearly a hundred files in the span of a few days. I would imagine my pattern of sporadic use to be a typical use case. I don’t imagine this software is intended to be used on a regular, daily basis or even a weekly or monthly basis. It is better to get the lifetime license, which means I own it and don’t have to pay for it again, and I can use it as much or as little as I like.