15 comments

7 hours??

that’s horseshit. i did 326 songs yesterday in 2 hours. dude’s broadband connection needs a checkup.

luke, on January 7th, 2009 at 10:30 am

The ability to one-click upgrade just disappeared from the iTunes main page. I had displayed it, and clicked on BUY IT, and it popped up and said that the item is no longer available, and returned my to the main page where the option had disappeared.

Chuck, on January 7th, 2009 at 10:54 am

To give your younger readers a sense of perspective, way back in the ’80s it cost me about $20 an album to convert my vinyl to CD, which might explain why I’ve never purchased a single iTunes track.

Roy, on January 7th, 2009 at 11:02 am

..and to get even stranger, while the choice is no longer on the main page for iTunes store, the upgrade DOES show under my purchases at the store, and the downloads are waiting to be downloaded, but when I tell it to start, it says that the store isn’t available. Wow.

Chuck, on January 7th, 2009 at 11:04 am

Apple tax my arse. Some of you are whiners, and cannot be pleased. People want DRM-free music. People get DRM-free music. Some people expect a free upconversion. Seriously? Do some of you really expect a free upconversion? You’re getting 256-Kbps encoded files versus the previous 128-Kbps and stripping DRM? And you think Apple wants to give this to you as a gift? You think bandwidth is free? Do you understand terms like “profit margin” and “shareholder value?” This isn’t communist Russia, folks.

The guy from Fortune’s theories are way off. Using the old pricing model and margins, sure, they’d lose money. But, the new pricing has to take into account a cheaper product. DVD’s do this all the time and are quite successful. I pick up $5.99 DVD’s often–and these are DVD’s I’d would never ever ever pay $20 for. The long tail indeed.

Brian, on January 7th, 2009 at 11:11 am

This is what’s called a “sucker bet”. Burning the DRM’d stuff to CD and then re-ripping the CD gets you the same end result, and any difference in audio quality between “iTunes Plus” and what you already have would only be detectable by oscilloscope.

Save your money, folks. You’ll need it later this year when you’re standing in a breadline waiting to buy your daily meal…

daniel, on January 7th, 2009 at 11:12 am

The bit about a music tax is just stupid. There is a huge cost for Apple to distribute these upgrades - you have to download all the songs again from their servers - thus they provide the infrastructure for 70+m users to download about 6 billion songs again. Think about it, if Apple were to do this for free, just about everyone would jump in and upgrade and their servers would simply grind to a halt. Personally, i’d like to see them implement either a system where you can choose individual tracks to upgrade or a maximum upgrade cost (say $50) to cover their costs but being reasonable for those of us with larger libraries.

nizy, on January 7th, 2009 at 11:14 am

Why not just spend $30 and buy software that will un-drm the drm?!?!!?!

Justin Land, on January 7th, 2009 at 11:27 am

The author fails to mention that the DRM free files are also upgraded to 256kbps and so sound better. Also, this should not be surprising as Apple charged the same amount to upgrade your music library when EMI when DRM free a year or so ago Finally, I really doubt Apple will keep most of that money - I suspect most or all of it will go to the music labels.

So - how exactly is this a tax? Isn’t it a price you pay for better sounding DRM free music? You don’t have to upgrade, but if you choose to do so, you get a better product for a fraction of what you paid for it in the first place. I guess when I bought our last car I paid the auto maker an auto tax.

Eric, on January 7th, 2009 at 12:27 pm

Double the bit rate for 30 cents?

Who’s complaining about this again? People who don’t actually listen to their music? Hello, that’s a noticalbe improvement. Anyone who says otherwise is lying, or never bothered to compare the two.

This is a great deal.

Jeff, on January 7th, 2009 at 1:30 pm

I’ve got no problem upgrading my purchased songs to iTunes Plus for 20p each. I like the DRM free-ness and better quality. What I do have a problem with is that I can’t choose which songs to upgrade. iTunes wants me to pay to upgrade EVERY song that I’ve ever bought off the store, even if I have since deleted it, like when I bought the CD album. THAT strikes me as an unfair tax, and It’s really dumb.

Matt, on January 7th, 2009 at 2:17 pm

@daniel: “This is what’s called a “sucker bet”. Burning the DRM’d stuff to CD and then re-ripping the CD gets you the same end result”

If you pour the contents of a shot glass into a coffee mug you’re not going to get more liquid. Converting 128kbps audio to uncompressed 16-bit CD won’t buy you anything. In fact, you’ll actually lose quality due to the two transcoding operations.

If you can’t hear the difference between 128kbps and 256kbps files then by all means, don’t worry about upgrading.

Barry Wood, on January 7th, 2009 at 3:13 pm

How many people are affected by the reality distortion field? If Microsoft, Nokia or Amazon would have charged 0,30 cents per upgrade to get rid of DRM the internet would have been plastered with messages from outraged people.

The fact is, you have to pay to get rid of unwanted technology that is no longer supported by the manufacturer. Conversion from LP to CD comparisons are way out of line, since you were never forced to upgrade. Here, I think it is a sure bet that in a few years time Apple will announce to no longer can support their DRM licences and everybody who want to keep playing their music either have to upgrade or burn to cd and rip back.

In the end, it is the consumer who pays the bill for the protective measures that an industry put in place and which has never been asked for by consumers. Now the industry has discovered that maintaining to measures is in fact more expensive than the rewards, it should be gracefull if the industry would pay for removing the measure and not charge the consumer again.

Martijn, on January 8th, 2009 at 12:18 am

I don’t mind paying “extra” to upgrade to a better sounding, 256 Kbps file. However, those files/songs are being offered to new buyers for only .99 cents each, NOT $1.29. I feel as if the extra .30 cents is a penalty for those of us who were supporting Apple/iTunes by purchasing the DRM versions. It would cost me over $300 to upgrade over 1000 songs/albums. I was outraged at first, until I began reading some of the posts here regarding bandwidth and server use and the cost to Apple to distribute the upgrades. I’ve since changed my “tune” a little bit and I agree with nizy ….

” Personally, i’d like to see them implement either a system where you can choose individual tracks to upgrade or a maximum upgrade cost (say $50) to cover their costs but being reasonable for those of us with larger libraries”

Pam, on January 10th, 2009 at 1:09 pm

of course you are going to have to pay. you are getting a second copy of the file at a better quality. if it was just stripping the DRM there might have been a way to do that for free. but it’s not.

folks need to keep in mind that they could have been made to just buy the song/album at full price if they wanted the better file. Instead Apple tried to be nice and offered them a major discount since they already had the file in a lower quality. they didn’t have to do that. they were trying to be nice. in keeping with allowing folks to buy new OS packages and other software within a close period to the time a new item is released or if someone buys a computer system with the old stuff after the new ones are announced.there is no law forcing them to do this. they do it to be nice.

Lucas, on January 11th, 2009 at 10:09 am