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iTunes Goes DRM-Free With Multi-Tier Pricing

Taking a cue from Apple CEO Steve Jobs' previous Macworld keynotes, Vice-President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller saved "one more thing" for the end of his Tuesday morning talk: DRM-free music on iTunes, with multi-tier pricing: US$0.69, $0.99, and $1.29 per song. Eight million of the iTunes Store's 10 million songs are DRM-free today, with the rest losing their restrictions by the end of March.

Mr. Schiller also announced that iPhone users will be able to buy music over AT&T's 3G cellular network, in addition to using the already-available Wi-Fi option.

 

 

5 comments from the community.

You can post your own below.

mrmwebmax said:

+

The new cost of iTunes Plus tracks—or the costs to upgrade existing tracks—are worth every penny. To me, the big story isn’t ditching DRM, which rarely got in my way, but rather the doubling of the bit rate to 256. It is the audio equivalent of switching from SD to HD TV.

I am listening to Nightwish’s “Sacrament of Wilderness” (from Oceanborn) right now, after upgrading the album to iTunes Plus, and the sound is jaw-dropping. Like iT+ tracks on Rush: R30, the drums, and especially the cymbals, have never, ever sounded better. Fans of Rush (and drummer Neil Peart) will be amazed that you can hear every nuance of cymbal-sticking.

And fans of goth-prog-symphonic-metal bands like Nightwish will hear every nuance of simultaneous female operatic vocals, harpsichord, male vocal death grunts, distorted guitars, and 100-piece string sections.

All

At

The

Same

Time

Seriously, people need to be talking more about sound quality here. Amazing. Simply amazing. The music is now in 3 dimensions. Unbelievable depth. (Tested on a 3G iPhone with Bose in-ear headphones.)

   Quote

Confused said:

Where are all the people who used to rant about how Apple was saving us consumers by standing up to the content owners and refusing to offer variable pricing on the iTS?  I would imagine this is a very dark day for them.  Apple has caved on such an ideological point, the content providers have won.

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Intruder said:

There comes a time when you have to choose to lose the battle in order to win the overall war. The record companies were trying to marginalize iTMS by making it the only one still using DRM. They have now lost that leverage.

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Confused said:

Huh, and here I thought iTunes has had DRM free tracks since 2007.  In fact, this isn’t the first time that Apple has had to react to the market after trying to bully content providers.  When AmazonMP3 launched, iTunes Plus (the DRM free tracks) pricing had to drop 30 cents from $1.29 to 99 cents in order to stay competitive.  And now that AmazonMP3 has proven that variable pricing isn’t the devious scheme to increase prices for the consumer that Apple said it was, Apple has again had to drop their own prices and offer a variable pricing scheme.  Content providers got what the wanted, consumers get cheaper songs, Apple, well, they spin it.

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WetcoastBob said:

If I remember correctly Phil said “One LAST thing.”

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