iTunes going DRM free starting in March

[LauraR]

http://www.macworld.com/article/1379...tunestore.html

iTunes Plus is Apple’s DRM-free encoding for the iTunes Store; music is encoded using the Advanced Audio Codec format (AAC) at 256Kbps. Beginning today, 8 million of the iTunes Store’s 10 million songs will be offered without DRM; the entire catalog is expected to go DRM-free by the end of the first calendar quarter of 2009.
Users who have already purchased music from the iTunes Store protected with Apple’s FairPlay DRM will be able to upgrade their entire library of previously-purchased songs, though an additional fee is required—30 cents per song.

Plus a new pricing structure:

New pricing structure
Since going online, the iTunes Store has retained one pricing model — 99 cents per track, with many albums priced at $9.99. That’s changing in April, said Schiller — there will then be three pricing tiers: 99 cents, 69 cents, and $1.29. Schiller assured the crowd that more songs are going to be offered at 69 cents than at $1.29, however.

[Speculant]

A step in the right direction IMO.

It might finally convince some music pirates to convert to legality, with all that DRM gone.

[LauraR]

For sure a step in the right direction.

This is not altruistic though. I have to think, without having the actual figures, that iTunes has a good amount of the online music downloads (legal). By doing this, and allowing iTunes to be able to be played on other players, they should secure even more of the market. I think they have the most songs available. Business-wise, it's the smart thing to do. They may get some converts.

[Mimsy]

The files are still in the proprietary AAC format, that has to be converted to mp3 before it will work on any of my four music players. Since I can get DRM-free mp3 files elsewhere, at a better price... why should I use iTunes again?