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.