Apple announced earlier this month that iTunes music sales were dropping the DRM, and now almost entirely in AAC format. It was a significant announcement and made the DRM-loathing camp (myself included very happy). One of the few bones we had left to pick was that to upgrade existing DRMed purchases to the new higher-bitrate DRM-free files you basically were held to ransom: upgrade your entire library ("show us the money") or go away. In my case, that would mean forking out another $100 which, given a big Christmas (and international travels) pushed it to the back of my mind.

Thankfully, Apple has now made it possible to upgrade songs à la carte to iTunes Plus. You pay the same fees (30¢ a song, 20% of an album's price etc) and simply pick and choose which iTunes purchases you want to upgrade. You'll need (at least for now) to be using the 1-Click iTunes purchasing as the Shopping Cart isn't working for upgrades, however if you've been yearning for DRM-free upgrades but can't stomach the large library-wide upgrade fee your prayers have been answered.

[via TUAW]

It's been a long time coming, but Apple has finally secured the deals to sell the entire iTunes music catalogue without DRM and the entire music library is finally available in the 256kbps AAC format that has been known as iTunes Plus until now.

Starting in April, iTunes will also be introducing variable pricing for songs - 69¢, 99¢ and $1.29 depending on the prices set by the record labels. Despite the momentum that the likes of Amazon and other DRM-free vendors such as 7Digital have been gaining in the last few months, the iTunes store remains the largest (and most popular) online music store.

If you're already sunk a fair amount of money in the iTunes store, Apple will allow you to upgrade your entire library to the DRM-free format - for 30¢ per song or 25% of the album price.

There's no denying that Apple's iTunes Store is both well designed and chock-full of music, TV shows and movies for you to buy. It's also got a rather awesome Genius feature for playlist creation [whilst cunningly up-selling you more tunes via the Genius Sidebar]. However when it comes to buying music, a large proportion of it remains crippled (and at 128kbps bit-rate) thanks to the iTunes Store's FairPlay DRM. Sure, there's iTunes Plus: but the selection remains lacking thanks to the devious tactics of the record labels. Amazon, on the other hand has had a high-bitrate DRM-free store for sometime.

Thankfully, there's now a new option that allows you to make the most of Apple's excellent store: and then skip over to Amazon to actually buy the music: Advantageous. Simply run the Advantageous installer, and a script [added to your iTunes Script menu shown above] will take the currently-selected track from the iTunes store, open your default browser and load the relevant Amazon search page.

It's a neat, and above-all free, timesaver that may just provide an incentive for iTunes Store addicts to go DRM-free. Advantageous requires Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and iTunes 8.

[Via BoingBoing]

Buying music directly from the Amazon.com MP3 store is one of Android's coolest features. Although it might not be the "killer feature" that some were hoping it would be, it offers a great way to get quality, DRM free music directly to your device. The only downside is that you have to download music over WiFi (the iTunes WiFi Store works the same way).

As a huge music junkie (my total collection, including digitzed CDs is probably about 2 TB in size -- and that's not 2 TB of FLAC either, that's 2 TB of mostly V0 LAME MP3s), Amazon's MP3 store is easily my favorite place to buy digitial music. Although it might not be making a dent in iTunes sales figures (here's a hint - get in more countries ASAP and start offering digitial exclusives like iTunes does), its increasing selection and weekly deals and promotions continue to make it the best game in town.

So how does the Android version of the store stack up? It hits the most crucial points, but it does lack some of the finesses that could make this a real mobile destination.

About half a year after announcing plans to open an online music store, LimeWire has followed through on its threat promise to go at least partially legit. The LimeWire store features about half a million tracks from a diverse set of mostly independent or minor label artists that you may or may not have heard of. There are a few big names featured on the front page, like Dolly Parton, Josh Rouse, Bell X1, and Gloria Gaynor. We really never thought we'd be writing a sentence with all four of those artists in it, but there you go. The site is currently in beta and the LimeWire team says it has plans to add "thousands of tracks daily."

All tracks are available as 256kbps MP3 files. Pricing is $.99 for a single track. Or you can get 25 downloads per month for $9.99, 50 for $14.99 or 75 for $19.99. At that last price, you essentially get 75 songs for $.27 each, assuming you actually download 75 tracks each month.

Currently the LimeWire store is completely separate from the LimeWire peer to peer file sharing application. There's no way to use the LimeWire client to speed up downloads, but the company does plan to offer some sort of integration in the future. How they plan to prevent users from buying songs and then sharing them with the world for free remains to be seen.

[via P2P Blog]

2007 has been something of a watershed year for DRM-free digital music. Well, legal DRM-free music sales anyway. First Apple announced plans to sell music that you could listen to on any player, and then Amazon beat them to the punch by launching a music store first.

While Apple continues to sell DRM-laden tracks in addition to unrestricted AAC files, Amazon sells only MP3 tracks which you can do pretty much anything you want with. That means Apple has always held an advantage in the selection department. But now it looks like Amazon is catching up.

Both Amazon and Apple launched their DRM-free music stores this year with one major label partner - EMI. Sure, there were also tracks from several minor labels, but the bulk of music that you've actually heard of on Amazon MP3 or iTunes Plus come from EMI. In October, Apple signed deals with several of the bigger minor labels including Sub Pop, Nettwerk, and Beggar's Group and announced that there were 2 million DRM-free tracks available via iTunes.

Now Amazon has announced a deal with Warner Music Group, which brings the number of Amazon MP3 tracks up to 2.9 million.

It's been a little over two months since Amazon launched its MP3 Download store, and the site's still around. So how is it doing? Well, Amazon hasn't publicly announced any numbers yet, but billboard speculates Amazon's captured about 3% of the digital download market and 6% of the physical CD market.

Considering that it hasn't even been three months since Amazon's digital music store opened shop, that's pretty damn good. With Pepsi joining Amazon to give away free MP3s, word of Amazon's new DRM-free store will only spread. Silicon Valley Insider suggests Amazon must be reaching a mainstream audience if Fergie is a top seller at both Amazon and iTunes.

While many find switching download services a hassle, we would strongly recommend taking Amazon's MP3 Download store for a test drive. The Amazon software can be configured to automatically add any music you buy to iTunes, and, best of all, the music comes DRM-free in a relatively high quality MP3 format, allowing Amazon's customers to do whatever they want with their music. Besides, DRM sucks and shouldn't be supported. Isn't that reason enough?

If absolute privacy is a concern critics are voicing against Apple's latest move with DRM-less tracks from EMI, they should have filed their complaints over four years ago when the iTunes Store first opened.

As the story goes, many users and industry pundits have announced their disappointment with the discovery that DRM-less iTunes Store tracks contain the owner's name and email address embedded in the file. Even Cory Doctorow and his merry band of EFF compatriots have added their ubiquitous $.0.02 to the mix, calling this an a privacy blunder on Apple's part. A key example cited for how bad this perceived breach of privacy can get is the theft of an iPod: if someone steals your DMP (iPod or otherwise, if you consider the fact that DRM-less iTunes Store tracks will play on any AAC-enabled device, including the Zune now), they could easily check through your files to scrape out your name and email address from any of the new DRM-less tracks. Fortunately, Geeks R Us nails the problem with this line of thinking in this So What post: "Apple embedded your personal information in content that only you should have is no different than them saving your email address in a Mail application preferences." If a thief stole a typical computer user's notebook - Mac, Windows or otherwise - they would easily have full access to quite a bit more information than the owner's name and email address. So why haven't Cory and his fellow perpetual protesters spoken out against this egregious privacy flaw in the wider scope of computing?

The fault with these complaints against Apple's latest non-DRM move runs more than skin deep, however, as this embedding of personal information didn't merely begin last week. Since the first day it was opened over four years ago, the iTunes Store has embedded an owner's email address in purchased files. You can easily verify this by importing a non-EMI iTunes Store track from a friend - iTunes will immediately notify you that your machine must be authorized to play the track, prompting you with a dialog requesting a password and the email address of the file's owner already filled in.

Watch out Cory - all your email addresses are belong to anyone who steals your iTunes Store files; just as they have been for the last four years.

The moral of the story is the same as ever, only a few of the details change this time around: While Apple certainly isn't the first to offer a DRM-free commercial digital download service (In the mainstream that title probably goes to eMusic), they are the first of the major services to take the leap of faith and offer a premium music catalog completely free of DRM. In all likelihood, if you aren't sharing your personally identifiable files over P2P networks, you don't have anything to worry about, and an email address is the last thing you have to fret over if someone steals your iPod. The thief is after your DMP because they want your gadget, not because they want to email you a great offer on viagra.

There is no more of a privacy issue with iTunes Store files (non-DRM or otherwise) than there is with the theft of your computer or mobile phone. Files bought from the store are supposed to remain just as private as the personal information embedded in them. Now, can we all go back to buying high quality, DRM free tracks - and not vindicating the RIAA by sharing them - so more record labels finally invest in DRM-free digital distribution channels like we've been asking for?

Bring on the downloaders! Amazon may offer DRM-free music downloads sometime in the first quarter of 2007. Oh, if the tides would break and bring sweet water to the masses. How many times do us insignificant bloggers needs to spell it out for the record companies in big, bold, block letters? How many times does the RIAA need to lose legal cases miserably and be raked over the coals for their transgressions for the execs to stnad up and take notice that the CD business is going away and that America the world isn't happy with the way music is sold and distributed? Get the picture already. If Amazon decided to take the high-road in the end and offer DRM-free music in the end, and if the software sucks much less than Unbox does, there may finally be a way to buy good music that isn't shackled to a dead-horse. It isn't like eMusic hasn't already done it. They have now sold 100 million DRM-free tracks. More digital download services need to send a message that the record companies will be forced to hear. One twist Amazon may have in mind is variable pricing, so certain types of media can be sold for cheaper prices. This would also attract more customers to the download store. I still don't see a killer app here, so Elvis hasn't left the building, but I am hoping to see a killer app soon, maybe Amazon will be the one, maybe not. I dare you, impress me.

Call it caving in, call it giving up, but I like to call it getting smart. Recording company executives are finally realizing that people will never stop file sharing. Yahoo is hoping that by offering the first DRM-less album (by Jesse McCartney), people will go buy the album. I dare say they will. If people know they can do with their music what they want, they are more likely to buy it than an album with ultra-restrictive DRM and a smattering of grape jelly. Let's say hypothetically, in a perfect DRM-less world, what would happen? Would people share songs between each other, yes. Will they get a majority of their music from other people, maybe. My thought is that people will still go get music from online stores (at least new music) because it is more convenient than hitting up a friend for a particular song. So, if the recording companies are willing to give us DRM-free music, the only real problem is file-sharing applications. I like the p2p interfaces I have seen, but no one has figured out a way to use that clean interface that loads fast and is customizable with "legal" content. Not Apple, not Microsoft, not anyone. I am still waiting for this type of interface in a music store, no graphics and all kinds of cruft, I want a simple interface that I can use to download all my music (like the old Napster) but at least for now I can be happy with DRM-less content. Not that I like Jesse McCartney, but you know what I mean.