I'm not thrilled with the $1.29 price point, which I'm sure will be applied to the hottest artists by some labels.  But it's a long overdue move making the downloads DRM free across the board.




SAN FRANCISCO - Apple is cutting the price of some songs in its market-leading iTunes online music store to 69 cents and plans to begin selling all tracks without copy protection.

At the Macworld Expo trade show Tuesday, Apple's top marketing executive, Phil Schiller, said iTunes songs would come in three pricing tiers: 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29, depending on the recording company they come from.

Until now, pricing has been 99 cents per song. The new pricing begins in April, and "with many more songs priced at 69 cents than $1.29, said Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a press release. Jobs was not at yesterday's event, as had been expected.

Apple offered the record labels that flexibility on pricing as it got them to agree to sell all songs free of "digital rights management" (DRM) technology that limits people's ability to copy songs or move them to multiple computers. By the end of this quarter, Apple said, all 10 million songs in its library will be available without DRM.

While iTunes is the most popular digital music store, others have been faster to offer songs without copy protection. Amazon.com started selling DRM-free music in 2007 and swayed all the major labels to sign on in less than a year.