During the opening keynote of the Macworld Conference & Expo, Apple announced a change to its pricing strategy used for the popular iTunes online music store.
Apple traditionally has charged $0.99 for each song, but the new plan will charge $0.69, $0.99, or $1.29 per song, depending how popular the song is. "Most" songs will be available for $0.69, but popular songs that are high on the Billboard charts and played on the radio will cost $1.29.
"Over the last six years songs have been $0.99," Apple senior V.P. worldwide product marketing Phil Shiller said during the keynote. "Music companies want more flexibility. Starting today, 8 million songs will be DRM free and by the end of this quarter, all 10 million songs will be DRM free."
In addition, Apple has chosen to drop DRM from a majority of the songs in its eight million song catalog. EMI Group and independent music on iTunes already has been sold without DRM, but now Sony BMG Music, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group will be available through the online service without DRM.
It's unsure why Apple finally decided to change the pricing scheme while also dropping DRM from many songs.
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Karma: 9130 , Tue 6 Jan 2009 21:54
Considering how popular iTunes has been with the $0.99 tracks and DRM, I wonder what caused Apple to finally change how it sells songs through the service.
Regardless, I'm sure there are some of you who will begin using iTunes now that Apple is ready to go DRM-free, and pricing has changed.
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Karma: 51620 , Tue 6 Jan 2009 23:51
I think the DRM free competition from Amazon had something to do with it...Amazon even gives away a quite a lot of Mp3s for free. The process is seamless and the MP3s that you get from Amazon are dropped into the iTunes software automagically. In addition, the MP3s i have seen over at Amazon are 256kbps and I think iTunes are like 128 not sure, I do not get my music there of course. 
. But, I do use iTunes to catalog my music on my netbook as I like the software. I can put podcasts etc on there and I like the coverflow view.
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Karma: 3080 , Tue 6 Jan 2009 23:51
i will not buy music downloads until they are uncompressed or Lossless compression, i want quality not quantity. Until then CD are for me. I wish apple would sell physical CD as well and let you get the download as well until you receive the CD in mail. Being the #1 music retailer and format, they eventually discontinue CDs i just hope if they do this that you will still be able to get quality sound instead of this compressed crap, I will only pay for uncompressed, mp3 are only good for casual use.
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Karma: 3340 , Wed 7 Jan 2009 01:18
With Jobs supposedly calling for a DRM free music world last year, this is not unexpected. Glad to see the crap DRM go by the way-side.
Non DRM TV shows next?? WE can only hope..
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Karma: 20090 , Wed 7 Jan 2009 14:46
I would think Apple would be more concerned with how much longer their god has to live. Hey, I'm just sayin'.
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Karma: 36510 , Fri 9 Jan 2009 18:31
not only 8m songs, starting from April Apple will sell all songs DRM free over iTunes 
