DRM-Free Music Debuts on iTunes

With one day to spare, Apple fulfilled its promise of releasing DRM-free tracks (courtesy of EMI) on its iTunes stores worldwide in May.

Actually, the service is called iTunes Plus, and it's exactly as advertised: DRM-free, higher-quality tracks sell for $1.29, versus the standard iTunes price of 99 cents. (Don't forget that you can upgrade your existing DRMed EMI tracks by paying the 30-cent difference for each track, or $3 per album.)

To get to iTunes Plus material you have to upgrade to iTunes 7.2. At first iTunes Plus appears as a mini-store within iTunes, but you can set iTunes to display the iTunes Plus version of a track by default whenever possible.

Steve Jobs is quoted as saying, "We expect more than half of the songs on iTunes will be offered in iTunes Plus versions by the end of this year," which strikes me as optimistic -- either he expects another major label to go DRM-free in the coming months, or Apple has been making deals with the independent artists that have DRM-free music available elsewhere, like the folks at Ninja Tune. But right now, it's time to bask in the DRM-free glory.

Are you going to take advantage of iTunes Plus?