So, whatever happened with Steve Jobs pronouncement that people will be able to purchase music from iTunes with no-DRM and at a 256kbps bit-rate. I never really put much credence into apples ship dates recently unless they say Available now. Example: Apple: AppleTV available Feb. Reality: March.

They still have two days to make the May "deadline" unless Steve is starting to lose his touch with reality.... even more than normal....

Sponge

Well, today (5/30/2007) at midnight my time (Mountain timezone), Apple rolled out iTunes 7.2 which added the ability to purchase high bitrate, non-DRM tracks from the iTunes Store. The tracks aren't currently up for download but Apple had added the ability to iTunes. I guess we wait now. I am sure Mr. Jobs is going to announce something tomorrow during his speech. There is a All Thing Digital conference going on and Steve Jobs is set to give a presentation at 11:15AM to 1:00PM (PST) and will be giving another speech along side Bill Gates at 7:15PM (PST). He will either announce the availability of non-DRM files there or Apple will just release them later on with a small press letter. Either way, the DRM free tracks are coming.

you need to turn on the iTunes Plus option in your account details, and then you will see a "+" sign next to anything that is DRM free.

iTunes will also offer you the option to buy upgrades to your existing iTunes store bought tracks at a special price (50c per track for the Australians). However it doesn't seem to give you the option of which tracks you can upgrade - it's all or nothing, which wasn't that much for me, but lack of choice sucks

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007...tunesplus.html

Anyone read this article about iTunes account info in DRM-free music?

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...music-too.html

(Edit: Ok, the above article was posted in a separate thread, but in my defense, I did a search for "drm" posts made yesterday, and only 4 threads showed up. :P The above was not one of them.)

Yeah, that is to be expected though. Even though the music doesn't have DRM, it is still copyrighted work. They don't want people spreading their tunes over P2P or torrent clients as that would still be an illegal act. I am sure they won't be using that information to spy on people, they will just use that information if they see the files being spread all over the internet.