Apple Offers DRM Free Music At A Premium

Apple is now promising High-quality, DRM-free music via it's new iTunes Plus offering. "With iTunes Plus, you get high-quality, 256-Kbps AAC encoding. All free of burn limits and digital rights management (DRM)." The company says that millions of tracks are available from all four major music labels and thousands of independent artists. The new scheme also allows you to upgrade your existing iTunes purchases to iTunes Plus "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.)" Check out what else is new in iTunes 8 here.

Apple drops price of DRM-free music

Feeling the pressure of new rival Amazon, Apple has decided to drop the price of it's DRM-free music from $1.29 to $0.99, bringing it's prices in line with the competitors offering. In this Globe and Mail article an Apple spokeswoman is quoted as saying "It's been very popular with our customers and we're now making it available at an even more affordable price,". While they may deny that the move is motivated by competition, it's hard to ignore the fact that the music industry is in flux and with more competition and bands going it alone, it will be interesting to see what happens over the next little while.

Universal to test DRM free music sales

BBC is reporting that Universal Music will try DRM (digital rights management) free music sales from August to January "and analyze such factors as consumer demand, price sensitivity and piracy in regards to the availability of open MP3s." This is certainly an about face for the music industry and hopefully a step in the right direction. Perhaps the music industry is finally getting it! 50 Cent, the Black Eyed Peas, and Amy Winehouse are all artists signed to the Universal label. Google, Wal-Mart, and Amazon.com are said to be participating in the experiment.

Amie Street celebrates with classics - DRM free

Earlier this week Amie Street, the popular music download site that prices music according to the number of downloads, announced that it had received an investment from Amazon.com. Also this week there have been some works of several classic big names added to the download collection. If you are a jazz lover check out Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. Other notables include the King himself, Elvis Presley, and comedian George Carlin. As always, the real nuggets are the up and comers who are taking advantage of this fantastic platform to get their music out there. Let's not forget that it's all DRM-free! Get over to Amie Street fast to get in on the real deals.

Free music! DRM free that is...

In a move that has music downloaders running for their credit cards ;-) Apple Inc. announced Wednesday the launch of iTunes Plus a worldwide portal, for iTunes Music Store, that will sell only DRM (digital rights management) free tunes. The tracks are reported to sell for $1.29 (us), 30 cents more than most regular, DRM'd, iTunes tracks and will be encoded at 256 kilobits per second as opposed to 128 kbps for regular iTunes tracks. What this means is better sound quality and more portability of songs between devices. Most of the EMI labels catalogue of songs will be available, this includes artists such as Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and Paul McCartney.