“Apple Inc. is reducing the price of all songs on its iTunes Store without anti-copying software to 99 cents from $1.29, bringing Apple’s prices on such tracks closer to those offered by Amazon.com Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other rivals in online music,” Nick Wingfield reports for The Wall Street Journal, confirming our earlier report of the price drop that we posted yesterday (Apple offers select iTunes Plus DRM-free songs for 99-cents).
Wingfield reports, “In an interview, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said music on iTunes Plus – the portion of Apple’s online music store featuring songs without digital rights management, or DRM, anti-copying software – will feature the reduced price later today or tomorrow. That applies mainly to songs from EMI Group Plc, the only major recording company with which Apple has cut a deal for DRM-free music so far. Apple has also already begun adding new music to iTunes Plus from independent recording companies at 99 cents a song… ‘It’s been very popular with our customers, and we’re making it even more affordable,’ Mr. Jobs said.”
Full article here.
HEY! What if I bought tunes already? Do I get an Apple store credit? Let’s all start crying now.
MDN word: learned, as in “I learned how to cry when a price goes down.”
I bought a song yesterday. Price protection!!! 30 cents please!
Thanks. love you Apple…
@John Gee
Actually, you’re only entitied to 15 cents. Don’t be greedy!
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nice move.
Ah, competition is good..for us.
Wow, I can actually feel good about NOT upgrading my songs to better copies.
But now will I be able to upgrade them for free? Methinks that feature is going to disappear.
I still have iTunes 7.1 (I think), the version that does not support downloading DRM-free songs. Will this work with an older version of the iTunes software?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Rarely a misstep, but Steve-O should rewind the clock when he was asked at the news conference with EMI to justify the cost when competing sites like eMusic offered vbr tunes at higher quality at a lower cost. Steve was doing a pretty good dance at the time, but most saw it as unjustified. Today’s announcement confirms that pricing error. That’s 2 price corrections now, Steve.
@DavidEGo – While you’re out in the garage polishing your beloved Pinto, let your poor Mac run a Software Update please, for God’s sake.
It’s good for competition, but I don’t care…. ‘cos…
1. I’ll always use Apple products… so I don’t care about DRM.
2.1. AAC 128kbps sounds good enough for me.
2.2. AAC 192kbps = less music on my iPod
3.1. Apple is testing consumers about… price, quality and size… before any move on the 99 cents.
> But now will I be able to upgrade them for free? Methinks that feature is going to disappear.
I think you are right. I’ll consider the 30 extra cents the fee for upgrading, and not having to pay 99 cents to get the better version. The only “plus” track I bought were for upgrades of tracks I previously bought at 99 cents.
Great news, but now let’s hope for a quickly expanding selection. It’s pretty limited right now.
As stupid as this may sound, i’m pretty sure there’ll be some dumba** planning to sue Apple over this. They’re everywhere. Sheesh…
Cut the price in half and then I’ll be interested. In Australia the DRM free music is virtually the same as buying a cd. Drop the price and I’ll dump mp3sparks like a shot. But why do I believe that the majors won’t be doing this until on their knees begging because of illegal downloads
Thanks Amazon for forcing Apple’s prices down!
As of Wednesday morning, there are still plenty of iTunes Plus songs that are listed at $1.29. I think reducing price is good, but increasing the + library is more important. Irony is when the song in the iPod nano commercial (1234) is DRM’ed on iTunes but MP3 on Amazon.
I love how the recording industry is “competing” with Apple by opening up their own download service. As if Apple really cares how low the prices will need to go. I’m sure Apple would be just as happy to give the music away free it if meant selling more hardware.