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

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
63,196
30,136


In May, Apple launched the Digital Rights Management (DRM) free portion of their Music Store called iTunes Plus. The copy-protection free songs sold for $1.29 and were encoded at a higher 256kbps quality AAC.

Earlier today, some users had noticed that certain iTunes Plus songs were now selling for $.99 instead of $1.29. At first it wasn't clear if the pricing discrepancy was simply a mistake.

Ars Technica is now reporting that Apple is in the midst of expanding iTunes Plus to include indie music labels and also dropping the price of all iTunes Plus songs to $.99. Apple will reportedly keep the old DRMed songs at $.99.

The article speculates that the price drop is a reaction to Amazon's DRM MP3 Store which has been very well received. Amazon's MP3 DRM-free store launched 3 weeks ago and provides 256kbps MP3s that can be seamlessly loaded into your existing iTunes library.

Article Link
 

Grimace

macrumors 68040
Feb 17, 2003
3,568
226
with Hamburglar.
I wonder if the law suits will come from this too. The price dropped too soon on my songs I paid $1.29 for!! Give me a refund Steve!! I can hear it now.... :rolleyes:
 

mashinhead

macrumors 68030
Oct 7, 2003
2,952
808
i don't know the iTunes store seems like kind of dead avenue to me. i find that i use it less and less. I think it should actually move to a subscription basis and then it will see more growth. I just get this feeling that both companies and consumers are starting to move away from it. The ipod's still great though.
 

NDLaHam

macrumors newbie
May 12, 2007
10
0
Madison, WI
excellent!!

Now just offer the songs in ACC or MP3(for people that don't use player that can't support aac)

Hopefully the other record companies will cave in eventually to this.

Wouldn't it be great if you could download it in as many formats as you want unprotected. FLAC, WAV, MP3, whatever. then you truely own the full quality of the music.
 

Mistershark

macrumors regular
Apr 28, 2007
201
0
I wonder if the law suits will come from this too. The price dropped too soon on my songs I paid $1.29 for!! Give me a refund Steve!! I can hear it now.... :rolleyes:

I'm just glad that most iTunes plus albums are already priced at $9.99.
 

wattage

macrumors 6502
Oct 14, 2005
320
0
Anyone else find it funny that some people vote this type of news as a 'Negative'!!

What's negative about a price drop??
 

saxman

macrumors 6502
May 13, 2004
301
0
Yeah for competition.

I wonder if they'll give me a credit for $0.145 per iTunes+ song I purchased since May (-;
 

elppa

macrumors 68040
Nov 26, 2003
3,233
151
I'm waiting for the first person to ask for the $0.30 cashback for every song they upgraded.

Any moment now…
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.