January 7, 2009 On the web: Free music on iTunes has its price Play video

(NECN: Ted McEnroe) - All of the talk before Macworld this year was about what wasn't happening. No Steve Jobs, no major new products rolled out, and so on. But Apple did manage to find something interesting to roll out yesterday - some changes to the iTunes Music Store - most notably, Apple finally getting caught up on DRM - digital rights management for music.

Since the iTunes music store opened, Apple has applied copyright protection code to music you buy at the store. In 2007, Apple and EMI reached a deal to sell music without the copyright protection - for an additional fee. You basically couldn't play it on any device except on an authorized device, and ultimately, if they decided to do so, the company would have the ability to shut of your access. Well, yesterday Apple announced it had reached a deal with the other three major music label groups to let people buy 10 million songs from a number of music labels without DRM. So once you own it, you own it.

The company also rolled out a three-tiered pricing plan, pricing tracks at 69 cents, 99 cents or $1.29, rather than all tracks being 99 cents. (As far as I could tell, it hadn't been implemented in the iTunes store as of this morning.) So now Apple has joined other major music stores, such as Amazon.com, in selling DRM-free music.

There are of course, catches. You can upgrade all the tunes you have bought on iTunes before now, too - but it will cost you 30 cents per song for the upgrade.

But it ends an era online - an era that spawned Napster and other peer-to-peer networks, and nearly spelled the death of the slow-to-accept-the-need-for-change music industry. We'll have to see what the new, DRM-free music means for them - but for users, it can be summed up in three words.

It's about time.

Apple is also now letting iPhone users buy songs (under 10MB) over 3G connections (and EDGE connections, if you *really* have time on your hands.)

Apple also made a few other announcements. The company rolled out updates to iPhoto, iMovie and iWork software, and announced a 17-inch version of the new Macbook Pros they released late last year.