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Apple dumps iTunes DRM
Kevin Spiess - Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 | 12:53PM (PT)


Listen to the music

Apple dumps iTunes DRM Image 1

Apple has come to an agreement with four major record labels to remove their digital rights management software (DRM) from their music.

Following increased competition from other online music providers, Apple has been facing some consumer pressure to remove DRM from iTunes. Previously, if you bought tracks from iTunes, you could not, say, burn them onto a CD for private listening, or easily transfer them to a friends iPod. But not anymore.

About 80% of iTunes' current library is offered DRM free, as of today. The rest of the songs will be DRM-free by the end of March. 

New prices have been introduced as well: before, all songs were the same price; now there will be songs selling for $0.69 and $1.29. A fee will also be charged if you want to remove the DRM from your old tracks already downloaded.

Update: It will cost you 40¢ to strip the DRM from an iTunes song you already have. Music video stripping will cost 80¢, and albums will cost a whopping 30 percent of the album price to take out the DRM.

Section: Technology

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Comments:

  • 0 thumbs!
    Noraf45 | Jan 7, 09 | quote
    Sucks that there's a fee to remove DRM from previously downloaded songs. That's essentially punishing people who bought early.

    I also don't really like that they're going to change the price of songs on a song-by-song basis. I bet that will end up causing the popularity of a song to control it's price. Or all the big music labels will push to increase their songs to the higher price, since so many labels have wanted iTunes to increase their prices for a while now.
  • 0 thumbs!
    chautemoc | Jan 7, 09 | quote
    Yeah, there really shouldn't be a fee.

    Still, thats huge and great news.
    Now if they'd just pass the manufacturing savings on to the artists, I'd buy from there all the time.
  • 1 thumbs!
    Jabberwockey | Jan 7, 09 | quote
    I started using iTunes roughly 4 years ago, mostly because I was sick of dealing with filesharing apps and I liked the ease of the iTunes store interface.

    Fast forward to now, where I have roughly 2100 songs from iTunes. It is going to cost me $840 to strip off their worthless DRM. Thank you, Apple, for rewarding your frequent customers. Faggots.
  • 0 thumbs!
    kspiess | Jan 7, 09 | quote
    The stripping fees do seem a bit excessive to me.
  • 1 thumbs!
    Noraf45 | Jan 7, 09 | quote
    Who knows, if they listened to people about this, they might listen to complaints about having to pay to remove it. Have to wait and see, maybe?

    At the very least there is the option, though, and future downloads won't have the DRM at all, which is good.
  • 0 thumbs!
    killerkid22 | Jan 7, 09 | quote
    wow, thats like buying something new, and then finding out the next week the prices drop 50%

    cuz...then you're like..dammit


    i have a library full of songs bought from Itunes. now you have to pay to get rid of the DRM? whats the point of that?
  • 0 thumbs!
    tallteen86 | Jan 7, 09 | quote
    @Jabberwocky - Yeesh, that is a lot of money >_>

    Youshould probably e-mail them, stating the large amount of cash you'd have to spend to do that. For that much money, you could buy a cheap desktop or laptop computer >_>
  • 0 thumbs!
    samuraisushimonster | Jan 7, 09 | quote
    About damn time.
  • 0 thumbs!
    MrGrimm | Jan 7, 09 | quote
    I sure am glad I never wasted my time with iTunes in the first place.
  • 0 thumbs!
    leejoe | Jan 8, 09 | quote
    omg, it is really a good news for us, i finally can put itunes songs to my mp3.
    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
- This news story is archived and is closed to new comments now -

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