New iTunes Pricing In Effect
Wednesday April 8, 2009
CityNews.ca Staff
Apple had two big announcements for its massive music player Tuesday: one related to how much it costs and the other, how you can use it.
New pricing for iTunes songs was introduced and it's based on demand.
Supply isn't an issue for the digital files. Instead, the more popular a song is, the more you'll pay for it.
Apple is now selling its most-downloaded songs for $1.29 each and less popular tracks will retail for 69 cents and 99 cents.
For example, each track off of the brand-new album from The Tragically Hip, "We Are The Same," is less than a dollar. But Avril Lavigne's single, "Girlfriend," is $1.29.
In January, the California-based company moved away from a fixed-priced system that saw all singles priced at 99 cents and all albums at $9.99. Now, it's up to the record label to decide the cost of the online album.
And you can use those new songs however you want. Apple also announced that it had removed copy protection technology from all of its tracks. The system, known as digital rights management or DRM, prevented files from being copied to CDs.
Now, you can copy the songs an infinite number of times, as long as those devices support the format Apple uses for music.
An ad shows colors of the iPod Nano September 9, 2008 in San Francisco, California. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.
