January 6, 2009 20:51

iTunes to make all songs DRM-free

Plus Apple introduce new pricing plan and mobile downloads

Apple announced today (January 6) that all songs at the iTunes store will soon be available without anti-piracy protection software DRM.

CEO Steve Jobs said that from today, all four major music labels—Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI, along with thousands of independent labels, are offering their music in iTunes Plus, Apple’s DRM-free format with higher-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality which is “virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings”.

Previously, all songs at the iTunes store had a limit to how many times they could be transferred between devices and burned to a CD.

In addition to the DRM-free format, songs will be made available at three price points, starting in April,.

Although it will vary from label to label Jobs added that: “songs on iTunes will be available at — 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29 — with many more songs priced at 69 cents than $1.29.”

Apple also announced, that iTunes customers can now download songs to their iPhone 3G for the same price as downloading to a computer.

Customers can also choose to upgrade their previously purchased songs to the DRM-free format for 30 per-cent of the album price.

The store will be offering eight million songs in the new format today, with the remaining two million tracks being made available by the end of March.

--By our New York staff.
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