Audio Video News

Apple will eliminate digital rights management from all songs sold through iTunes.

Traditionally, iTunes has used the AAC audio codec (as opposed to MP3) with Fairplay DRM. Now it will sell AAC without the DRM. DRM-free tracks first appeared on iTunes in 2007, escalating to 80 percent of iTunes material at the beginning of this year.

Apple has also abandoned its stubbornly held one-size-fits-all pricing. Some songs still sell for the original 99 cents, but the price range now extends from 69 cents for back catalogue to $1.29 for hot new stuff. The higher price is also used for tracks encoded at a higher bitrate of 256kbps, as opposed to the standard 128kbps.

And where iTunes goes, so goes the rest of the music download industry. Rhapsody and Verizon wireless are matching iTunes' tiered pricing, reports This Week In Consumer Electronics. Also getting in on the act are Amazon, Walmart, and Lala, according to ArsTechnica. But some of those services, such as Amazon, have been selling DRM-free MP3s for some time, so maybe the influence runs both ways.