downloaded music

Some four or five years ago I downloaded music from the HMV site, its been on my PC for years now.
I recently bought a new lap top and wanted to transfer some of the music to that, and also onto a memory stick to use in the car.
Trouble is I seem to be getting certain tracks that wont play and a message saying I need a licence?

I payed to download it in the first place, so why cant I copy it for my own use?

 

Its part of the very contentious Digital Rights Management rubbish. The principle is fair enough. Artists (or more likely the record labels) don't want people to just share it with everyone. In practice its just nothing but pain, for exactly the reason you've just said.

There are various free audio file converters kicking about on the interweb. I can't recommend one because I don't use them, but there'll be plenty to that convert between MP3 and RAW, and back again. If you convert them to RAW, all the DRM stuff should in theory be stripped out, so when you convert it back to MP3, it should be fine on any MP3 player.

I used Audacity a long time ago for an entirely different purpose (lots of one to one time in a studio with a lady with a very sexy voice, doing voice overs, and I used Audacity to clean up and balance all the recordings). That might do what you need. And it's free.