Taking a Look at iTunes Plus
- January 14th, 2009 - 4.30 am UTC
- WoA Feature Articles, iTunes Store
- Alex Brooks
One of the biggest announcements at Macworld 2009 was that Apple would be selling all its music DRM-free by the middle of the year.
Apple describes iTunes Plus as follows:
Apple’s DRM-free format with higher-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings.
To the average consumer even this description doesn’t mean much.
DRM Free?
Many of you may be asking what exactly DRM is in the first place. DRM which stands for Digital Rights Management prevents songs purchased on the iTunes Store being played on any other music player that isn’t an iPod. Additionally iTunes songs with DRM can only be on five computers at one time and can only be burnt to a CD seven times in an “unchanged playlist”.
iTunes Plus songs lose all those restrictions as well as receiving double the sound quality. This means you can move your iTunes Plus songs onto any digital music player, give them to all your friends and burn unlimited CDs.
File Format
Apple uses a file format called AAC, despite many claiming that it is a proprietary format it is not. AAC is simply an alternative to the MP3 format and is represented with the .m4a file extension for DRM-free and .m4p for DRM’d files. The problem with AAC is that some digital music players are unable to play it. Thankfully iTunes allows you to convert any iTunes Plus song to a normal MP3 file.
To help you along here are a few popular non-Apple products that support DRM-free AAC files: Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3, Sony Ericsson Walkman phones, Sony PSP, Creative Zen and Archos 605 WiFi.
Account Information
There is one downside to purchasing iTunes Plus songs, despite having no DRM they still contain your email address which is embedded into the file when it is download to your computer. Not a problem unless you wish to share your file around the world.
Upgrading to iTunes Plus
The iTunes Store has been in operation since 2003 which means many of you have 5 years worth of music which does contain DRM. Apple is offering you the chance to remove the DRM from all of these files for 30¢ (£0.20) a pop.
Unfortunately Apple only offers the opportunity to pay and convert all your music at once.
How do I know?
Apple announced that it would be slowly moving all of the iTunes Store over to iTunes Plus, so it is possible that some songs will still contain DRM on the Store for the next few weeks.
When buying from the iTunes Store DRM-free songs contain a plus icon next to the buy button.
Comments
Brad Rhine 14th January 2009, 14.03 pm
“This means you can… give them to all your friends”
Uh, no it doesn’t. Not legally anyway.
Alex Brooks 14th January 2009, 14.37 pm
I’m not condoning illegal sharing of music but giving a friend a song is no different to lending them a CD or DVD, everybody does that.
A visitor 15th January 2009, 16.58 pm
“… normal MP3 file”. By implication, then, AAC is abnormal.
Bill Bosacker 17th January 2009, 15.41 pm
There is a major difference between sharing a CD or DVD and giving some one a copy of your music. Additionally, if they make a copy of the CD or DVD and then give it or the copy back to you, then both of you are violating copyright laws and deserve everything that the law brings to bare. I have no tollerance for thieves. There is no difference between pirating and shoplifting.
dizzle 18th January 2009, 03.28 am
Umm only if you are hopelessly pedantic.
john 20th January 2009, 09.23 am
All of y’all need to chill they just wanna make 30 more cents out of people
John 25th February 2009, 23.09 pm
I have a medium sized music collection, of approximately 10GB, not huge, but it is a copy of every CD I own, plus some which got stolen a few years ago when my flat was burgled. I also happen to live in a geographically challenged location, New Zealand. Out here for a long time, there was no way to legally buy music online, at all. Even now, iTunes is the only one I could name. Amazon, nope, restricted to US only, Walmart, same deal. All of MP3.com was my best hope for a long time, they were legal (in Russia anyway) and did not restrict overseas customers from buying their wares, and lasted well until they lost the battle with Visa and you couldn’t pay them money any more. Until last year, I did not own a Mac, and primarily used Linux for my home machines DRM content was completely out of the question.
Then Apple, King of the restricted content and proprietary systems suddenly makes it legal, and possible to purchase songs, simply download them and play them on your gear. OMG! And in NZ, the tunes were all iTunes the day after it was announced! OMG!!
I now have several albums, and I’m a happy Apple customer. (I run iTunes in a tinyXP VirtualMachine, just for the purchase and download) All my media players play the unencrypted .m4a files fine, so I don’t even have to convert them! I always said I would pay iTunes prices if I could actually use their content, so now I can, so I do. Now if only they will do the same for the movies and music videos