Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple Announces Changes to iTunes Store

MacRumors

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
69,255
40,258


At today's Macworld Expo keynote, Apple announced several changes to the iTunes store.

Starting today, 8 million of the iTunes Store's 10 million songs are now available DRM-free via iTunes Plus. All 10 million songs in the iTunes Store will be offered DRM-free by the end of March. Apple will also offer users a one-click solution to upgrade their entire library to iTunes Plus for 30 cents per song or 30% of album prices.

Additionally, the iTunes Wi-Fi music store is now compatible with 3G, allowing iPhone users to preview and download the entire iTunes music catalog over the 3G cellular network. Songs are available at the same price and quality as over Wi-Fi.

Finally, beginning in April, the iTunes Store will offer pricing in three tiers ($0.69, $0.99, and $1.29) based on the prices the music labels charge Apple.

Article Link: Apple Announces Changes to iTunes Store
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2009/01/06/apple-announces-changes-to-itunes-store/
Nice changes to tracks from the iTunes Store. Keep the record labels happy and maintain market share in this key consumer segment. The addition of over the air downloads to an iPhone 3G will serve as a competitive advantage for Apple against rivals and will make it that much harder for the others to compete.

Apple's end-to-end business model is key competitive advantage that others simply cannot replicate.
 
Woooow--that's going to be a lot for me to upgrade. What's everyone else doing?
 
apple really needs to let people upgrade to itunes plus in some other fashion rather than a one click batch upgrade. especially those of us who have bought a lot from the store... it can be a bit much all at once imo.
 
Overall, this is a good thing. But I think raising some of the prices to $1.29 is going to promote piracy.

Don
 
So... any guesses whether or not people are not going to want to pay $1.29 for most of the drivel on the top 100 these days, piracy goes up. labels blame it on drm-free tunes. DRM comes back to iTunes and pricing structure stays. Any takers?
 
Question to those who upgraded, did it replace the tracks and maintain the play count and ratings or are they reset?

Thanks
 
So, currently iTunes Plus implies two things: DRM-free and higher bitrate encoding (256 vs. 128).

After everything is DRM-free, will there still be an iTunes Plus version that is just higher bitrate? Or are all tracks going to be higher bitrate now too?
 
So we can pay 30 cents per song to upgrade to DRM free "plus" now or we can wait a while and the DRM will just go away on it's own. Will Apple really put in the effort and cost to retain DRM now that there is no reason to?
 
3G Download--nice

I just tried the 3G purchase & download -- I'm in a spot where there's no wi-fi -- and it was much quicker than I expected. Nice!
 
More of my business

I'm going to actually buy many more songs from iTunes now that I can easily throw them into Final Cut Pro.

I don't want to upgrade all of my music that I have just select songs - hopefully I'll find out a way to do that. (Should be free in my opinion except for the songs that cost $1.29.)

I wonder how many songs will be at each of the price points?

Are all tracks at 256 instead of 128 with this change?
 
And now I may move back from Amazon to iTunes. Although Amazon will still be cheaper, so I am not sure...

Gotta say I am not too pumped up about paying to upgrade tracks I already purchased to DRM-Free, but I will probably do it anyway.
 
I'm not sure how this is all going to play out yet. If the bulk of the future music I want to purchase is $1.29, I just won't buy from the iTunes store. If it's $.69, I'll likely buy more and if it's $.99 I'll likely continue at the same pace.

But there is no way in hell I'm upgrading my current library at 30% of cost of a new track. :eek:
 

Attachments

  • itunes.jpg
    itunes.jpg
    19.6 KB · Views: 10,508
sishaw said:
I just tried the 3G purchase & download -- I'm in a spot where there's no wi-fi -- and it was much quicker than I expected. Nice!
Click to expand...
It works on EDGE now as well. It's just slow as crap. But hey, you'll at least be able to buy something if you really want to. For 4.4MB it was going to take 18min.
 
swissmann said:
I'm going to actually buy many more songs from iTunes now that I can easily throw them into Final Cut Pro.

I don't want to upgrade all of my music that I have just select songs - hopefully I'll find out a way to do that. (Should be free in my opinion except for the songs that cost $1.29.)

I wonder how many songs will be at each of the price points?

Are all tracks at 256 instead of 128 with this change?
Click to expand...

yes at 256. and there is no way to do it other than the batch at this point. as read in the FAQ on the store. i think people might have to raise hell about that to change it.

i understand the charge for bandwith and servers and all that.... should be a bit more discounted imo.
 
Errm....Is it worth it to upgrade because I buy songs in iTunes Plus format as much as possible, but it will cost me $45 to upgrade my entire library...Is it really worth it???


Also not looking forward to $1.29 pricing...:(
 
Not bad

Only $651 for me to upgrade my library!!!:eek:

I hope they change their policy and allow me to upgrade just a few at a time versus all or none as that ain't NEVER gonna happen!
 
works over Edge also

It's not just Wi-fi and 3G. For those of us with old-school original iPhones and lowly Edge service, we can browse, preview and download songs from the iTMS just like the rest of the civilized world...albeit, much more slowly.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back