Just about the only legal way to download music mp3 files is from a legitimate service such as Rhapsody. These services do offer you the ability to download the files to your computer and it is legal to make backup copies by converting the protected WMA files to an mp3 allowing you to use them on any mp3 device like an iPod.

The fastest way to do this is by simply backing up protected WMA files with the use of specialized legal software than can copy the files to your computer and convert them to the mp3 format using high quality soundcard recording extractors.

You can do this with simple sound card recorders but they can only backup the file at the same speed the song file plays making it a tedious task. Furthermore you have to start and stop the recording at the beginning and end of every track.

Fortunately there are some very reliable and high quality solutions available that can automate this process for you. The way it works is the software uses a very sophisticated algorithm that detected the start and the end of the track and converts the file to mp3 up to 15x faster than the song file plays.

These protected WMA converting software packages also will fetch all the title information, cover art and lyrics so that importing it into your favorite music manager like iTunes can be a breeze. The best part is that it’s all legal as long as the backups are for your personal use only.

To view a video of exactly how to convert protected wma to mp3 check out my demonstration video over at http://www.squidoo.com/convert-protected-wma-to-mp3