MUMBAI: Apple Inc closed its final appearance at the Macworld trade show on Tuesday by cutting the price of some songs in its market-leading iTunes online store to as little as 69 cents and disclosing that soon every track will be available without copy protection.
According to reports, Apple’s top marketing executive, Philip Schiller, said iTunes songs would come in three pricing tiers: 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29. Record companies will choose the prices, which marks a significant change, since Apple previously made all songs sell for 99 cents.
The company noted that beginning today, all four major music labels namely Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI and thousands of independent labels have agreed to offer their music in the DRM-free iTunes Plus format with higher-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding. DRM or Digital Rights Management are limitations imposed in the usage of digital media by publishers or copyright holders, disabling copying songs or downloading them to multiple devices. iTunes customers will now be able to purchase and download songs directly onto their iPhone 3G over their 3G network for the same price as downloading to their computer.
By the end of this quarter, Apple said, all 10 million songs in its library will be available without DRM.
While iTunes is the most popular digital music store, others have been faster to offer songs without copy protection. Amazon.com Inc. started selling DRM-free music in 2007 and swayed all the major labels to sign on in less than a year, reports note.