All of iTunes now DRM Free

by Jamie Thingelstad on January 6, 2009

in Music, Techie

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.

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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.

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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.

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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

Raanan Bar-Cohen January 6, 2009 at 6:03 pm
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 :)

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Jamie Thingelstad January 6, 2009 at 8:10 pm
@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! :-)

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Doug January 7, 2009 at 12:07 pm
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…

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Jamie Thingelstad January 7, 2009 at 8:13 pm
@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.

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