Music File Type Conversion Help

[Nomadic Dragon]

I recently got a gift card to buy songs off of iTunes. The problem is that the format of songs is m4p which can't play in any other player than the iTunes player. What I would like to do is either 1. find a player that can play m4p's(I know Winamp and Media player can't I've already tried). or 2. find a way to convert the m4p's into mp3's. So..can anyone help?

[obvious troll]

you can convert them on iTunes.
go to edit > preferences, and on the advanced tab, in importing, select import using mp3 encoder. then on your music library, right click the songs you want to convert and select convert selection to MP3.

[Nomadic Dragon]

It says I can't convert them since they are protected files.

[M-50]

Try this program. Switch. link is http://www.nch.com.au/switch/plus.html. Without the full stop at the end. It converts a lot of different file types. If that does not work then this
http://www.xilisoft-audio-converter.com-about.com/download.html
or this site has a list or converters that might be helpful to you
http://www.mp3-converter.biz/m4p-to-mp3-converter-directory/
or you can use this converter
http://www.dvd-tool.com/convert-m4p-to-mp3.html
to convert your files.
hope it helps