Can “upgrade” previously purchased songs for 30 cents each, will also be able to purchase music using an iPhone.
At long last it seems that Apple has finally decided to embrace DRM-free music.
In a announcement made recently at MacWorld, Apple said it’s 10-million-song library will go DRM-free by the end of the quarter and will retail from between 69 cents and $1.29 a song. The former would be for older, less popualr songs and the latter for more recent hits.
From Apple:
Now, you can choose from millions of iTunes Plus songs from all four major music labels and thousands of independents. With iTunes Plus, you get high-quality, 256-Kbps AAC encoding. All free of burn limits and digital rights management (DRM). So iTunes Plus music will play on iPod, Apple TV, all Mac and Windows computers, and many other digital music players. It’s also easy to upgrade your iTunes library to iTunes Plus. You don’t have to buy the song or album again. Just pay the 30¢ per song upgrade price. (Music video upgrades are 60¢ and entire albums can be upgraded for 30 percent of the album price.)
Customers will also be able to make music purchases with their iPhones instead of having to use a PC.
With most other online music retailers having already gone DRM-free it seemed only a matter of time before Apple followed suit. But, considering that they had you locked in once you purchased an iPod, there was never really any pressure to remove it from consumers who weren’t really planning to switch portable media players anyways.
Either way, it’s about time.
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Yay this is truly been a historic last 3 weeks for file sharing. iTunes goes completely DRM free the RIAA stops suing file sharers and the ISPs tell the RIAA they aren’t going to do anything about “piracy”. We won!
@Infamous
It really has been nice these last few weeks!
> At long last it seems that Apple has finally decided to embrace DRM-free music
I’m sure what you meant to write is that ‘finally the music industry and apple have reached agreement on pricing flexibility and drm-free music. Nearly two years ago Jobs penned an open letter to the music industry calling for DRM-free conditions on licensing: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic/
The issue is and always has been keeping licensees happy. Given that an early release of iTunes had the banner “Rip Mix Burn” I’d say that Apple has been all for DRM-free music for a long time.
It’s also worth pointing out that iphone users have been able to make itunes purchases with the iphone for a while now but that it was only when using wifi. Again this was likely due to a 3rd party relationship issue with the carriers and not apple wanting to screw people.