Good to see yesterday Apple lowering the price of their iTunes Plus DRM-free tracks from $1.29 to 99 cents a track across the board.

They didn’t really have a choice with AmazonMP3 offering a better selection. ARS Technica raises a good point below.

What remains unclear is whether users will be able to upgrade their DRMed songs to iTunes Plus songs for free (since the songs are now priced exactly the same), or whether they will still have to pay extra to upgrade.

As of this writing this morning the iTunes Plus section in iTunes still describes this as an “upgrade” (pictured above) which it very much is any time you leave DRM content for DRM-free. They aren’t advertising the price change yet. I clicked on a few random tracks and they were all priced $0.99. No idea yet if the upgrade will turn from 30 cents a track to free upgrade. Apple has a chance to score some major points here.

Leopard has 300+ new features
And speaking of scoring points, yesterday was also the release of their 300+ features in Leopard which comes out next Friday 10/26, most likely at the customary 6pm release time. This was probably the most active thing people were posting about in RSS. Credit Chris Pirillo with the first mention on Twitter, and he has a nice roundup of his favorite Leopard features. I’m still digesting the list and will wait to comment in detail until I have Leopard in hand and installed which hopefully will be next Friday night.

Led Zeppelin to offer entire library for digital download
Led Zeppelin has announced they will be offering their entire library online for digital download (DRM-free too?) — finally. How long before The Beatles fall into suit? Zeppelin has timed this announcement with their one off concert reunion with Bonham’s son Jason on the skins.

AmazonMP3 developers
Back to AmazonMP3 and related, for fellow developer readers, in the 10/3/07 update of Amazon E-Commerce API, Amazon made available a new search index in the US locale: MP3 downloads. There’s our ticket for incorporating DRM-free music into our applications.

It’s a great thing seeing this DRM-free movement finally gaining legs and moving. Perhaps in a year or two we’ll be able to buy any song and/or complete album DRM-free online.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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