The announcement today that all music in the iTunes store was going iTunes Plus and removing the DRM protection was one that I was expecting and looking forward to. I don’t mean that I was following recent rumors about DRM being removed, but rather that I’ve expected that DRM will be removed from music for over a year. It’s just a matter of time. I’m happy to mark this milestone on my calendar.
I came home and fired up iTunes. It found 49 albums plus some odds and ends to upgrade. I track DRM in my library with a smart playlist. It says I have around 1,800 items (including movies and TV shows) that have DRM. 728 songs takes a huge chunk out of the music and the rest will follow in coming weeks.
I’ve never had iTunes download 700+ items in one shot. It seems it can only do 250 at a time, so this will be busy downloading for a while.
I can happily say goodbye to music-related DRM now. We still have DRM for movies and TV shows, we’ll see where that road leads.
Cool. I’ve been purchasing DRM free music from Amazon for a while now b/c of the Apple DRM issue.
By the way, how did you “…track DRM in my library with a smart playlist.” ?
p.s. we seem to be running the same theme again — this happened once before
@Raanan,
You inspired me to write a quick “How To” for the simple playlist to track DRM content. With screen shots and all.
PS – You are always copying my theme! Get your own theme!
Did you really pay $161 just to get rid of DRM? I hate DRM, too, but I’m not sure I’d be willing to pay that much…
@Doug,
Yes I did. I don’t like DRM at all, particularly for music. I didn’t buy any DRM-protected tracks from any provider until iTunes released iTunes+. I felt that the tide had shifted and that the end of DRM was guaranteed, and simply a matter of time.
I’ve been planning that I would “upgrade” all my music as soon as the option was available, and I did.
Note, the DRM isn’t the only thing. You also get a 256kbps AAC file, so higher quality as well.