Tech & Biz

iTunes Changes Song Prices, Finally Eliminates DRM

by Jarrett Martineau | April 8, 2009 at 09:49 am

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All songs for 99¢? No more.

Apple's online music retail giant iTunes finally did away with its single price-point model for song sales on Tuesday, when it rolled out its anticipated new three-tiered selling system.

From this day forward, iTunes will sell individual songs at three pricces: 69 cents, 99 cents, and $1.29.

As it was in the days of compact discs, tapes, and vinyl, record companies will set the prices for the sale of their artists's material.

On day one, songs including "Jai Ho" from the "Slumdog Millionaire" soundtrack, "Single Ladies" by Beyonce and "Chicken Fried" by the Zac Brown Band were bumped up to $1.29. The main iTunes page advertised collections of 69-cent songs that included "London Calling" by The Clash and "Monkey" by George Michael.

Other songs from the same albums and artists remained at 99 cents.

In perhaps better news for music fans and consumers, Apple has finally done away with its restrictive practice of applying DRM, or digital rights management, to songs sold through its service.

Songs bought on iTunes will now be DRM-free and able to be copied and transferred between one's computer, music players, and portable devices — a long overdue improvement that follows the lead of other major music retailers like Amazon.com, who have been DRM-free for months.

Apple also did away with copy protection technology known as digital rights management, or DRM. Without DRM, the songs can be copied to any number of CDs, computers and music players, as long as those devices support the AAC encoding format Apple uses. AAC, like MP3, is a method of compressing large audio files while trying to preserve sound quality.