Apple have just announced, during the MacWorld keynote, that 10 million songs on iTunes will become DRM free by the end of Q1 2009.On the Apple iTunes store the text reads "This is a special offer to upgrade your entire music library of previously purchased songs, albums and music videos now available in iTunes plus. You will be charged $0.30 a song, 30% of the current album price and $0.60 a music video to upgrade. Just click buy now and new versions of all your music below will be downloaded in iTunes Plus. This page updates automatically as we add more music in iTunes Plus. Please check back often!"
Tracks should sell for 69¢, 99¢, and $1.29 -- depending on their demand.
In a separate announcement, iPhone users are now able to purchase music from the iTunes store via 3G. Previously users could only download music on a Wi-Fi network.
Image courtesy of Engadget
And someone will have that cracked and free for everyone in 10 minutes. Lol not gonna happen. They are not going to let a program that can show the hacking world how they put their DRM on mp3s into the wild.
Lol, He's not talking about "Plus"-prices...
The prices for songs are now:$ .69, .99, 1.29
They will continue to work for now. But I'm sure the day will come (probably not any time soon, but eventually) when Apple shuts down its DRM servers and they will become useless.
At least Apple is giving its users the opportunity to replace their DRM files with DRM-free files first. And that's how I see it: They don't want to leave users in a lurch, but they need to pay for the bandwidth for re-downloading songs somehow.
+1 I think its terrible apple have not done it for free or well at least have a say £5 flat fee for all your music (assuming the total value is over £5 if you paid 25p a track.
Glad I don't use RiP-OFF-Tunes.
Glad I don't use RiP-OFF-Tunes.
Lmfao hahaha
You know, the whole part about you NOT owning the songs and how you are merely licensed to use said song for a set time period which is at APPLE's leisure. Meaning the agreement can be terminated at any time in which case you must delete all download songs.
Or am I just dreaming.. Doubt it!!
When you go to the upgrade link it shows you all the albums/songs which can be upgraded, you can select the ones you want.
Damn, how many songs have you purchased? I just upgraded 23 songs and it was less than $7 (I had bought about 50 or so songs, but those 23 were the only ones available for upgrade right now).
Anyhow, I wonder if this "upgrade" will copy over your edited meta data from the old files to the new ones, such as ratings, last play date, lyrics, etc.
Look for a link that says "Upgrade" in the Quick Links section on the top right hand corner.
don't have an "upgrade" option in the quick links.
its possible all the stuff you have already purchased is itunes plus already.
Indeed, after I upgraded my collection of 28 purchased songs for a fiver, the upgrade link disappeared, but I did get a new message at the top of the store that said all my music was up to date but to check back regularly as more music would be upgraded in the future.
The kind of people who buy into this crap just so they can consider themselves "legitimate" deserve this kind of corporate throat-cramming BS. Meanwhile, the RIAA continues to fight piracy and sue people that are compelled to avoid paying for music not once but TWICE? Do you see the irony of DRM? Boy I love news like this... it fuels my passion for hating anything and everything APPLE!!!
Last edited by plexdude on 07 Jan 2009 - 01:25
If Microsoft did this...
What? It'd be called iTunes 9, not work properly and cost $150 to upgrade? lol
MS wouldn't do it for free, and you know it!
MS wouldn't do it for free, and you know it!
He is saying if Microsoft did what Apple is doing, people would be bashing them like there's no tomorrow. When Apple does it, they are praised.
Zune marketplace has less then 10% drm on music now. Only the monthly zune pass has drm music still
AND, they're charging everyone AGAIN for the songs - come on, what is with that??
I don't use iTunes just what it seems in what I can read.
There isn't a new version, but you might as well upgrade if you haven't anyway. Who knows what they changed in the last version that could prevent you from getting new music. I think they only let the latest version download from the store anyway.
Just check Apple Software Update, or if you've uninstalled that (on Windows I believe that's an option, but it's a core part of OS X anyway) find the version of iTunes (probably in the help menu somewhere, or under the iTunes menu on OS X) and compare it to the website.
QFT. Encoded with AAC, but in an .m4p wrapper (which is the part that contains the DRM).
Exactly. I love steam & 7digital
I just wish they would let you upgrade in increments. Right now it is telling me I need to pay $260 to upgrade my library - what if I just want to do it by genre or something!
What a way to thank all those who bothered to use it.
Unless you want how it was before, with no expanded DRM-free library and no choice to upgrade.
I wouldn't buy water from Apple if my ass was on fire.
I wouldn't buy water from Apple if my ass was on fire.
So they traded down.
Makes perfect sense.
I wouldn't buy water from Apple if my ass was on fire.
So they traded down.
Makes perfect sense.
nope it's a upgrade... cause if you got a Sansa e200 series (v1) you can run Rockbox (www.rockbox.org) on it which makes it far better than the overrated/overpriced IPOD stuff is.
cause in general the Sansa e200 series is a pretty good player for your money (i.e. good bang for the buck) if your only using it for pretty much audio which is the whole point of those in the first place
cause with rockbox it can play alot of audio formats that most stock firmware players cannot... i really like Rockbox for it's .OGG support myself.
The amount of ignorance in this thread is amazing.
The amount of ignorance in this thread is amazing.
you can but aint most of the IPOD's you can find nowadays not supporting rockbox? ... either way though... my point is, Sansa is far cheaper for similar level of player compared to the IPOD stuff... which still makes the point valid overall.
cause basically.. you can find alot of 4GB-8GB Sansa e200 series players for probably 50 bucks or less while a similar level of IPOD is probably twice-ish that price?.
Last edited by ThaCrip on 07 Jan 2009 - 05:39
Last edited by bradsday on 07 Jan 2009 - 21:29
i don't buy songs and video from itunes store often.
because i have Aiseesoft iPod Movie Converter.
i found it few monthes before and then i really don't need itunes store. it can convert all the popular formats to iPod video
formats.
have a try here:
http://www.aiseesoft.com/ipod-movie-converter.html
here is also one for mac user:
Aiseesoft iPod Video Converter for Mac
get it here:
http://www.aiseesoft.com/ipod-video-converter-for-mac.html
When I first started downloading music from iTunes (back when I was young and naive), I didn't know it would be protected by DRM. I didn't even know what DRM is. So I downloaded a lot of songs. It then turned out I could not play them on friends' computers and other devices. I was not happy.
Now they are going to charge me again to buy the same songs I already have bought!?
It's not about the higher quality, it's about the DRM. I'd rather them upgrade it with the same quality but just not DRM and I'm sure a lot of others would! The fact is, I just want my music DRM free and I don't want or need it higher quality. They should provide DRM-free upgrades at 128KBPS for free and if they are not able to then they shouldn't make you pay for the 256KBPS upgrade. It's as simple as that.
There was nothing that clearly stated you cannot play music on other devices and that the tracks were DRM protected. Nothing, back when I was downloading them. They may have said in the terms and conditions or something stupid, but nobody reads those, let's face it. We don't have time to read a long list of T&C when they could have just put a notice on the iTunes store or given us this upgrade for free.
We have already bought the damn tracks! Some of us expecting to be able to play them on other devices!
Commenting has either been disabled on this article or you are not logged in. Click here to login or register, its free!
Note: Anonymous commenting is disabled in order to keep the quality of responses to a high standard.