Convert M4P songs to M4A?

Those .m4p files are older DRM-protected iTunes Store purchases. Simply converting or renaming them won’t remove the protection, and Apple says older protected AAC purchases can’t be converted directly.

I’d first check whether any of those songs are available to you as an iTunes Plus download. Apple says an older protected purchase can be upgraded if an iTunes Plus version is available.

For any that aren’t, there is still an Apple-supported route: if the PC is authorized to play the purchases, iTunes can burn DRM-protected purchased songs to an audio CD. You can then import that audio CD back into iTunes as AAC or MP3. Apple documents both burning protected purchases and importing audio CDs.

I’d keep the original .m4p files backed up until you’ve confirmed the newly imported files play properly on the Pixel. There’s also no need to keep paying for Apple Music just to make those old .m4p files convertible.

That diagnostic result is actually a useful clue. Windows burned the .m4p files as a data CD, so it just copied the protected files onto the disc. That’s why iTunes doesn’t see it as an audio CD to import.

In iTunes, try putting just one or two of the .m4p songs into a new playlist, select the playlist, then choose File > Burn Playlist to Disc and select Audio CD as the disc format. Apple’s instructions are here: Create CDs and DVDs in iTunes on PC – Apple Support (UK)

If that still fails, the exact error iTunes gives when you try to burn those one or two songs would probably tell us where the problem is.

Thank you so much for the suggestions.

I cancelled Apple Plus and redownloaded my purchased songs to iTunes. Some of them came down as .m4a's and the rest as the same old .m4p's. I suspect the former were later purchases.

For whatever reason I was unable to get iTunes to burn the .m4p's to a cd, but I was able to find them all on my hard drive and have Windows burn them. When I insert this cd iTunes ignores it despite my setting to have it ask to import. I ran the iTunes cd/dvd drive diagnostic which says "data or mp3 cd found", "audio cd accessed successfully" and "unable to read audio cd". Odd, because the files on the cd are all .m4p's and if I double-click one iTunes is happy to play the song.

I'm stumped. I did ask DRMare if perhaps I failed to properly register my purchase of their conversion software and if that could be why only 7 songs out of the 40 were converted, and await their reply.

That did it! I have .m4a's now. Phew that was a slog. Thank you kindly for your help.

Glad that worked — thanks for letting us know!