help trimming/fading songs

I'm getting married and have picked two songs for the ceremony for my bridesmaids and I to walk down the aisle to. The problem is that they are too long in the entirety, and I'd like to fade them out at an earlier point.

I have a macbook with OSX 10.5.8 on it. I really would like to find a way to do this for free, especially since it is only 2 songs.

Help please!

Audacity can easily do that, it also has a fade filter

Audacity: Free Audio Editor and Recorder

I probably should have specified that the two songs in question were downloaded from itunes. Will that make a difference? I tried to open each with Audacity but it didn't work.

You have to grab the file from the actual library folder and most likely import it into Audacity. Open up a new project file in Audacity and then under File or Edit there should be an option to import a file (not too familiar w/Audacity, but they all do the same stuff largely). Then you should be able to draw some fade outs pretty easily and export to a new file.

They may have copy protection on those tunes, but if not set iTunes preferences to import to MP3 (Itunes preferences > General Tab > Import settings and set import to MP3.

Then select the song in the library and go to the advanced menu and you will get the option to make an MP3 version of that tune.

Then import that MP3 version to Audacity and edit it to suit your needs

iTunes dropped copy protection from their songs quite some time ago (two years?). It's more likely that Audacity's support of AAC is poor than that the track has copy protection.

But if the tracks are old and still DO have copy protection, the OP can upgrade the songs to get rid of the DRM *and* improve the sound quality to 256kbps for 30 cents per song.