Apple Launches iTunes Plus

Apple:

Apple today launched iTunes Plus — DRM-free music tracks featuring high quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings — for just $1.29 per song.

Not coincidentally, iTunes 7.2 is out, too.

My brief experience: I bought a new iTunes Plus album, and it worked perfectly. Unsurprisingly, the Plus tracks contain embedded metadata with the name and email address from your Apple ID/iTunes account. The upgrade feature seems broken, though: I own a bunch of tracks that should be eligible to upgrade, but when I click the “Upgrade to iTunes Plus” link, iTunes says none of my tracks are eligible. Update: My fault. Ends up all my eligible tracks were purchased using a second iTunes Store account; after I logged in using that ID, I upgraded successfully.

★ Wednesday, 30 May 2007