It's about time they finally priced DRM-free mp3s lower. Kinda sad that it looks like the only reason was because the competition was beating them out in doing it. Does better quality mean better bitrate? Or does it just mean DRM free ;) "Paying for the convenience of taking their songs wherever they go" Putting DRM on mp3s would seem to cost more... as opposed to leaving them alone. But seriously, DRM on mp3s is ridiculous. In my opinion if you buy it, it's yours do/take wherever you want.

The iTunes Plus songs are DRM-free AAC files with 256 kbps encoding, not mp3's. Quoted from the rpress release

"CUPERTINO, California—May 30, 2007—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."

I absolutely agree with Jordan that "if you buy, it's yours do/take wherever you want." Problem is, people abuse this by giving infinite copies to friends / social network / anonymous network.
In my opinion: DRM is not evil. DRM is not bad. All current implementations of DRM are at best bad and at worst evil. I will sing paens to the person / group that develops DRM that is transparent to the legitimate customer and thwarts the thief. All current DRM is exactly the opposite.
A person or company that sells a product is entitled to be paid by each person who takes a unit of that product, even if it is intangible.

Isn't it amazing how people begin to think they are f*&king journalists or some shit just because they manage a blog site?

They file format is not MP3; it's AAC.

TG Daily; starting to piss off more and more people with their BS, inaccurate reporting style...

I dont get the fuction of drm... Ok i do but it will never work like intended. Even asus is marketing soundcard that can strip drm off... You can even do that with out any special hw. set microphone setting what i hear and you can record what should play out of your speakers, or put your speaker cable to your microphone slot..

So Peter do you really think drm helps? it is just annoying those customers who are buying, not the ones downloading it "for free". i have even heard someone loosing their drm files because windows had to be reinstalled. Think about that. How offen that happens with "stolen" files.

While ppl at media industry spends alot of money on these copy protections there are always someone who can crack it open... and you only need one. i mostly lisen 80´s stuff anyway so i dont have to buy cd filled with rootkits or "rent" overpriced drm files.

We as a customers are not the only ones thinking we pay too mutch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ5iHaV0dP4

My opinion on music and movie sharing is simple. You can't stop it so why try? Artists and Movie makers should accept file sharing and move on. Charging people $15 a CD or $10 a movie ticket is now obsolete.

Artists can still make plenty of money through concerts, t-shirts, CDs (for those who like CDs), etc... you know things that can't get 'pirated'.
Same with movies. They can make plenty of money charging to watch in a large theatre, or owning a produced DVD with Extras.

They just can't hold a monopoly and make insane amounts of money, but they sure as hell can make enough to survive. Instead of millions they get hundreds of thousands? Big deal.

There's no way I can convince you of that. Look back at this whole thing after a while - years, maybe laugh over it a couple decades from now. You'll understand it then.

The only problem is that its too intrusive to be practical. Why don't they just have all media free on the internet? because eventually people will stop buying hard copies and going to over-priced movie theaters. Making "hundreds of thousands" isn't even breaking even in the movie industry, and barely as much in the music industry, and that's only because concerts have an extra value to them. The costs of production for high-quality media is too high to give away for free. NBC has already pulled all of their shows from iTunes because the iTunes sales weren't making enough revenue to support the format without advertisements.
If we stop paying, the industry stops playing.

Walmart and Amazon have been doing this for a while now. In fact - they are both cheaper than the "new" price depending on what type of albums you are looking for.

And I can give reasons for it: namely that the true pirates who are selling knockoffs of CD's, DVD's, and games have ALREADY usually stripped the DRM off the products within a week of the release of said item.

We even have ways where iTunes DRM can be removed WITHOUT having to go through a bunch of BS because of clever coders.

DRM does absolutely NOTHING to prevent pirated stuff from showing up on the internet, it just makes the true customers get reamed because they are being charged a higher price to pay for a DRM that doesn't work in the first place.

The only reason why I can think of they will allow non DRM, is because they are putting YOUR information into the song when you buy it as a watermark... Now if you put your song up for download or give it to your friends, they can trace it back to you. Not really a big deal since you shouldn't do that anyway, BUT, what if you really do want to give it to your friend (as you would with a cd). Even though you do not own it anymore, YOUR information is still in that watermarked song you gave to your friend, and that still makes YOU liable for what they do with it... dumb...

If you don't think watermarking is real, the emmy movie previews already use this technology and even caught someone who put the preview on the net.