Apple releases the chains on iTunes DRM
The final announcement at today’s Macworld 2009 keynote was indeed the hoped for, predicted and downright too long in the coming release of the DRM on iTunes downloads.
iTunes Plus is the name of the format which comes at a 256 kbps AAC-encoded standard and they’ll be availble from today at three price brackets of either 59p, 79p or 99p per song with albums still at £7.99. You’ll also be able to download them straight to your iPhone over the 3G network at the same cost.
It’s all been made possible by deals with the four majors and probably quite a lot of coaxing on Apple’s behalf. The good news is that you can upgrade your entire current library of heavy with DRM tracks at the click of a button. The bad, evil, truly horrible news is that it’ll cost you 20p per song! That’s £200 for a collection of 1,000. Very, very nasty indeed.
The deal brings Apple back in line with the likes of the Amazon music store and 7digital who will no doubt release a statment soon about how much they welcome the move.
Related posts: Macworld 2009 liveblog | 17″ MacBook Pro
