Apple has announced major changes to the iTunes Store in its keynote speech at the MacWorld show in San Francisco, including making it entirely DRM-free by the end of March. That story on CNET yesterday was pretty bang on, it turns out.Eight million of the 10 million tracks on the store have been switched to DRM-free iTunes Plus versions today, including songs from all four major labels. The other two million will follow in the coming months. They'll all be encoded as 256kbps AAC files, not MP3s.Apple is also abandoning its fixed pricing model. From April, there will be three prices for music tracks: $0.69, $0.99 and $1.29. Apple says which songs cost what will be determined by “what the music labels charge Apple”. The company says “most” albums will still cost $9.99, and that “many more songs” will cost $0.69 than $1.29.There'll be an easy upgrade option for iTunes users to convert every song they've bought from iTunes in the past into DRM-free versions for $0.30 a song, or 30% of an album price.Finally, the iPhone’s iTunes Store will now work over 3G as well as Wi-Fi, enabling users to buy songs over the air. The feature will work [...]
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