Apple Debuts Unprotected Songs Online

Apple Inc.'s iTunes Store started selling thousands of songs without copy protection Wednesday, marking the trendsetting company's latest coup and a model for what analysts say will likely become a pattern for online music sales.

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iTunes users who want to upgrade their DRMed library to iTunes Plus can now do so on a song-by-song or album-by-album basis.

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Be warned: your account information is stored in every file Although iTunes Plus files feature no copy protection, files downloaded still contain the email address you have registered with iTunes.

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Is anyone who is concerned about DRM buying music from iTunes? Yo! That would be me. First and foremost, I think AKH is pretty worthless when it comes to his commentary re: Apple, but even for him he asks a pretty silly question, in this case. He states:

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Apple on Wednesday issued a formal announcement regarding its expanded iTunes Plus service, which now offers more than two million tracks at the reduced price of just 99 cents.

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Apple plans to expand iTunes Plus to include certain indie music labels starting Wednesday, October 17 (or sometime this week, at least).

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Apple iTunes Plus was announced with a big bang and the promise of free and open music. Then it was learned that non-DRM files were proprietary and that it turns out that the files are encoded with your name and email address.

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Apple's iTunes store—in partnership with EMI—is now hawking DRM-free music at twice the bit rate of its standard fare (256Kb/s vs. 128Kb/s) and charging a $0.30-per-track premium for it.

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It's been a long time coming.

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Apple® today launched iTunes® Plus—DRM-free music tracks featuring high quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings—for just $1.29 per song.

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