Apple on Tuesday followed through on its promise to remove all digital rights management (DRM) from music sold on the iTunes Store. The company also unveiled tiered pricing for individual songs and albums.
All songs on the iTunes Store are now available at 256kbps AAC encoding, which Apple says is virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings.
Apple began the process of converting its music to remove DRM in January when Phil Schiller announced the move during his keynote address at Macworld Expo.
The other change to the iTunes Store involves pricing. Apple adopted new pricing options that include selling songs for 69 cents, 99 cents or $1.29. In the UK that equates to 59p, 79p and 99p.
While there is no clear way to determine what songs will be priced at, Schiller did say that more songs would be priced at 69 cents than $1.29, or 59p rather than 99p.
Of course, Apple is offering users a way to upgrade all of their existing music to DRM-free songs. You can get to this link on the iTunes Store by clicking on "Upgrade to iTunes Plus."
Apple will be offering iTunes customers a one-click option to upgrade their entire library of previously purchased songs to the higher quality DRM-free iTunes Plus format for 20 pence per song or 30 per cent of the album price.
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Comments received
Tom said on Tue, 07 Apr 2009
The only reason iTunes is now 100% DRM free is because all the tracks which weren't available in the Plus format have simply been removed. Pretty stupid really.
Harry said on Tue, 07 Apr 2009
Not true. Plainly.
Nick said on Tue, 07 Apr 2009
single tracks from 29p, albums from £3 at the Amazon.co.uk MP3 store.
RDH said on Tue, 07 Apr 2009
Countless music has been removed because it hasn't been made available in iTunes+ by record companies. The music business has to do the bare minimum to promote music on iTunes yet cannot get there act together to provide better quality versions despit having several months notice. They deserve to lose money and shoud stop crying!
Kevin said on Tue, 07 Apr 2009
Still won't be using it, due to the cost of upgrading existing DRM'd music. Pathetic.
Kevin said on Tue, 07 Apr 2009
To put that in perspective, their asking me to pay £133 to upgrade to DRM free music... Like hell.
Gunnerrob1 said on Tue, 07 Apr 2009
Nick, thanks for the advice, just tried Amazon to get music bargains. Problem was it was generally more expensive than itunes. Amazon has it's "top sellers in music list" and granted you could buy "now that's what i call music 72" cheaper on Amazon but all the real music was cheaper on itunes. Still it's good that there's competition now. However the pleasant itunes user experience generally sells itself, Amazon looks worse than walmart, stack it high sell it cheap ethos (can't stand it). each to their own I guess
Gabriel said on Tue, 07 Apr 2009
@ Kevin, unfortunately the reality of the situation has to do with the server load on Apple's side. Asking to re-download non-DRM'd versions of your tracks, at twice the size (256kbps instead of 128kbps), is a bit much to expect for free.
Obviously, in an ideal world it *would* be free to upgrade, but alas, we don't live in an ideal world...
Tino said on Tue, 07 Apr 2009
Apple can suck my plums at that price.
iTunes4eva said on Wed, 08 Apr 2009
If the record labels had their way iTunes would be selling albums at local store prices. The main reason they have offered such a low price on existing tunes is because of the limitations the DRM places onto the file. You're trying to tell me that for the freedom of removing that DRM lock-down, to be able to put the files onto other players, play the files outside of iTunes if you want, you won't pay just a little bit to re-download a completely new, fresh version of the song file? c'mon get real. Apple deserves to at least break even on the cost of serving the stuff up for you.
And I have to agree, the iTunes interface and integrated shop just follows in the traditionally simple apple interface methodology we've all come to know and love. Search, preview, buy, play, legal!. So much easier than trolling the net for illegal copies of songs, inconsistently encoded tracks, renaming, sorting into a library, importing into your player.
Don't be a hater, embrace it for what it is.
mark ryder said on Wed, 08 Apr 2009
I hope mp3 format dies out and we can get back to a real format that has no loss and you pay a fair price for so Artist can keep investing time into being artistic, otherwise all you wingers complaining about the penny extra you pay for the musical escape that's worth far more to your lives than you would admit, you will soon all be complaining all the music is cr*p..
Stop being such greedy selfish wingers you pay pennies for music now and soon all you'll end up with is getting new bland trash...maybe that will be the new trendy sound "bland trash|"..it will still be 0.99 and you will all still moan ..."Strictly Underground true to the scene" do a Google!
Carols Huarez said on Wed, 08 Apr 2009
Mark Ryder, I agree with your sentiments, but your arguments would be more effective if you didn't insult people. Or at least learn to spell whingers.
vader said on Wed, 08 Apr 2009
i used to use itunes for music but, sorry, amazon is generally cheaper and DRM free. yes, it's not as nice as itunes but it's a bit like windows...cheaper and awful to look at, but it does the job okay.
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