ITUNES CHANGE

APPLE HAS ANNOUNCED A PRICE SHIFT ON ITUNES TRACKS:

At yesterday's MacWorld conference, Apple announced that they'd be introducing a price shift on some of their iTunes tracks, which have always cost 99 cents a pop. But beginning on April 1st, there will be three price points. Most of their songs will still cost 99 cents . . . but now, select older "catalog" tracks will cost 69 cents, while hot new hit songs will be bumped up to $1.29.

Apple has always refused to budge on their 99-cent download price . . . but they've apparently decided to cave in order to make their entire service DRM-free. (--As you probably know, DRM-free music files are unprotected or unlocked tracks.)

The new three-tier pricing was part of a deal with three of the four major labels . . . Sony, Universal, and Warner Music . . . to allow iTunes to sell DRM-free tracks. (--They'd previously reached a DRM-free deal with the fourth major label, EMI.)

So beginning yesterday, 8 million of the 10 million songs on iTunes were made DRM-free . . . and the remaining 2 million will be switched over by the end of the month. (--If you bought protected tracks from iTunes, you can now switch them out for the better-encoded DRM-free files.)

For what it's worth, iTunes' competitors . . . the Amazon MP3 Store, Wal-Mart's digital music store, and eMusic . . . have been DRM-free for over a year now.

Here's a fake news report from The Onion about Apple's revolutionary new laptop, the "MacBook Wheel", a computer that comes fully equipped . . . with no keyboard. VERY FUNNY!!