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Apple offers a la carte upgrades to iTunes Plus
Apple announced earlier this month that iTunes music sales were dropping the DRM, and now almost entirely in AAC format. It was a significant announcement and made the DRM-loathing camp (myself included very happy). One of the few bones we had left to pick was that to upgrade existing DRMed purchases to the new higher-bitrate DRM-free files you basically were held to ransom: upgrade your entire library ("show us the money") or go away. In my case, that would mean forking out another $100 which, given a big Christmas (and international travels) pushed it to the back of my mind.Thankfully, Apple has now made it possible to upgrade songs à la carte to iTunes Plus. You pay the same fees (30¢ a song, 20% of an album's price etc) and simply pick and choose which iTunes purchases you want to upgrade. You'll need (at least for now) to be using the 1-Click iTunes purchasing as the Shopping Cart isn't working for upgrades, however if you've been yearning for DRM-free upgrades but can't stomach the large library-wide upgrade fee your prayers have been answered.
[via TUAW]
Comments
6
Subscribe to commentsRoddeJan 30th 2009 12:30AM
What? I'm using a shopping cart but I can upgrade my songs and albums just fine..
nightmarekirbyXJan 30th 2009 1:54AM
Just rip the drm for free like us normal people
Dave ForsterJan 30th 2009 8:21AM
I'm astonished that people actually pay for downloads... of any variety ! I guess those that do just have higher morale standards than the rest of us.
DarkeSwordJan 30th 2009 9:40AM
Yes, paying for a product like any good person should do certainly makes us feel better about ourselves.
The word you're looking for is moral.
Dave ForsterJan 30th 2009 10:05AM
actually I meant moral e-standards :-)
DavidJan 30th 2009 11:02AM
That's still an insult to everyone who bought music from iTunes prior to the DRM-free announcement. Say no to Apple's restrictive conditions.
Use DoubleTwist to strip the DRM out of your AAC files. And if you want to make truly portable music files then use M4A to MP3 Converter against your un-DRM'd iTunes music to create high quality MP3s with full ID3 tag information. Both are free utilities.
Another good freeware app is MP3 Gain, which adjusts the audio levels of you MP3 files so you don't wind up with some loud and some soft songs in you collection (this can happen when buying music from multiple sources like Amazon.com and Walmart.com). You can level a single song, an entire album (so all songs on the album flow smoothly from one to the next), or run it against your entire Music folder if you want.
Lastly, MusicBrainz is a great freeware app for identifying, ID3 tagging, and organizing/renaming your MP3s into any format you want (for instance Artist\Album\00 Track Name, or Genre\Artist - Track Name if you prefer).
Enjoy your music on YOUR terms, not the store's.