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 $1.29 per song. iTunes Plus is launching with EMI’s digital catalog of recordings, including singles and albums from Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Frank Sinatra, Joss Stone, Pink Floyd, John Coltrane and more than a dozen of Paul McCartney’s classic albums available on iTunes for the first time.
iTunes will continue to offer its entire catalog, currently over five million songs, in the same versions as today—128 kbps AAC encoding with DRM—at the same price of 99 cents per song, alongside the higher quality iTunes Plus versions when available. In addition, iTunes customers can now easily upgrade their library of previously purchased EMI content to iTunes Plus tracks for just 30 cents a song and $3.00 for most albums.
“Our customers are very excited about the freedom and amazing sound quality of iTunes Plus,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in the press release. “We expect more than half of the songs on iTunes will be offered in iTunes Plus versions by the end of this year.”
“This is a tremendous milestone for digital music,” said Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group, in the press release. “Consumers are going to love listening to higher quality iTunes Plus tracks from their favorite EMI artists with no usage restrictions.”
With the release of iTunes Plus, customers can now download tracks from their favorite EMI artists without limitations on the type of music player or number of computers that purchased songs can be played on. iTunes is also offering customers a simple, one-click option to easily upgrade their library of previously purchased EMI content to the iTunes Plus versions. EMI music videos are now also available in iTunes Plus versions with no change in price. iTunes Plus songs purchased from the iTunes Store will play on all iPods, Mac or Windows computers, widescreen TVs with Apple TV and soon iPhones, as well as many other digital music players.
The iTunes Store features the world’s largest catalog with over five million songs, 350 television shows and over 500 movies. The iTunes Store has sold over 2.5 billion songs, 50 million TV shows and over two million movies, making it the world’s most popular online music, TV and movie store.
More info at Apple’s iTunes Store here.
MacDailyNews Note: The first time you buy an iTunes Plus song, you specify whether to make all future purchases iTunes Plus versions (when available). You can change this setting by accessing your account information on the iTunes Store. To change your account information: In iTunes, choose Store > View My Account. Click the “Manage iTunes Plus” button. Click the checkbox for “Always show me iTunes Plus music and music videos when available.”
I’ve been mixing and mastering one up coming CD for about a month > lot of bounces from Logic to iTunes. There is definitely a difference from the original master to CD quality but no real diffrence between the CD and AAC 128k. Record company such as EMI has the master “tapes” and can use higher quality encoders so I think most people can’t hear quality difference between 128/256/CD especially if you have pre-90’s CDs that have not been digitally mastered. It also depends a lot of what kind of music we are talking about. Studio recordings are made up to 192k sampling rates (CD=44.1k) and when you have that good source material even mp3 can sound good.
I’ll probably try it. I know at 128 kbps I’ve heard distortion from bass and had other sound artifacts, so hopefully this means cleaner sounding tracks.
b,
Yes, of course you are right. All of this time, i have been using Sony HD5 (which is superior sound wise) and I have been using 256 kbs Atracplus for all my CDs. However, I always wish i could pick and buy only songs that i like (without DRM) in high quality format. I found 256 kbs is the middle ground between quality and quantity *(HD space). I just can not go for lower bit rate.
Having said that, if i really like the music and the artist, i almost always buy the CD in the end.
Anybody who is trying to argue that 128 kbs and 256 kbs are un-noticeable. Please don’t bother. Some people just don’t hear the difference and some do (like me).
Okay, just bought my first Plus album, and it’s a steal — individual tracks for $1.29, but they’ve got the entire album (Faure Requiem and Orchestral Music) for only $7.99! It’s like buying the Requiem and getting the rest of the music free.
Not sure if I’ll upgrade all my music (it’d cost $140), but I’m at least interested in upgrading the classical collections — I’d probably hear most of the difference there…
Okay, problem number 1 is that it’s taking forever to download…the servers may be overloaded… grrrr
Just to echo what some others have said, most people aren’t going to notice a difference between 128 and 250, but if you’re going to listen with even half decent headphones or speakers then 250 could offer an improvement. Also if you want to burn audio CDs from your purchased music then clearly 250Kbps should make produce a better CD.
Many people are still making the mistake of talking about tracks ripped from their CDs at 128Kbps as though that’s exactly the same quality as iTunes Store purchases when it’s not. I’ve often been pleasantly surprised by the quality of my iTunes purchases and they do tend to sound a bit better than the tracks I’ve ripped from CD at the same bit-rate. If you encode from a better quality source than a CD and you do so with a pro encoder instead of iTunes, then you’ll get better results and that’s what I assume is happening with music on the iTS. There is not one leven of quality with any given bit-rate, you must take into account the source and the encoder which can make all the difference. Also some people are still talking about bit-rates across different codecs as though they are all equal when they aren’t.
I can remember listening to my tape player, a panasonic personal stereo (like a walkman only better) and I thought that sounded pretty good until I started listening to more CDs but the little panasonic player was convenient. It was highly rated for sound quality by the Hi-Fi magazines but thanks to my iPod and AAC I now realise how flat the Panasonic player sounded. I rip my CDs at a minimum rate of 192kbps with VBR which does give me a noticeable improvement in sound quality over my 128kbps ripped ones. Digital music is about a balance between convenience and quality. I don’t really have problem with my iTunes Store downloads so I won’t upgrade many but I will upgrade some just to show support for the DRM-free and higher quality downloads.
We do all have an opportunity to send a message to the music industry by buying or upgrading at least one song.
I just realised that another benefit of DRM-free downloads is that we can more easily use the music in our iLife productions.
After installing Itunes today I have one new problem. My ipod will no longer accept mp3s that i ripped from CDs made from ITMS bought songs. I’ve done this with almost all of my ITMS bought songs so i can play them in my car’s mp3 player.
Seems like they took away the upgrade option! I was trying to upgrade my music and was getting error messages and now there is no option at all..
????
I still see an upgrade option when I visit my ‘iTunes Plus’ page but the store is clearly struggling with all the traffic it’s getting at the moment. I suppose it’s not just people visiting, buying and previewing but the fact that the ‘Plus’ tracks will clearly eat up more bandwidth.
Anyway I’m sure normal service will soon return when things have calmed down.
“Seems like they took away the upgrade option!”
I doubt it. I got the same error today, but they are probably taxing the system on the first day with people like us.
Woo baby! Listening to LCD Soundsystem just purchased from iTunes Plus. A little better quality for the same $9.99 price as the HANDCUFFED version at 128 kbps. I’ve been waiting for this album ever since Apple/EMI announcement. Watch the rest of the record companies fall like dominoes!
That’s what I’m talkin’ bout!!
MW: easy – you bet it was!
There are natural differences between people, the ears are different. Majority of people don’t hear slight sound differences. Frequency range is different for different ears as well. Those happened to get born with music ears can really hear details and higher frequences like 20KHz for example. The difference between 128K and 256K is not what you traditionally would expect when comparing CD to audiotape, for instance. The frequency range is the same, there would be no jammed tape sound interruptions or mechanic driven harmonic distortions. Most of the music details are still there, that’s why Apple is selling 128K by the way. But there are really microscopic sound details that can make sound soft or hard and this is normally the difference: 128K sounds significantly more “metallic” then “sweet” 256K if you play it back to back. The lab tests have actually proved that most of the pretty advanced music ears don’t distinguish the difference between MP3 256K and standard CD 1411K. So 320K is already little bit from the area of paranoia
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” /> Obviously, as hard disk space is getting cheaper and cheaper, it would be pretty much ok to store the 1411K CD quality in the near future, or at least Apple Lossless bitrate. At least couple of years ago 192K was considered industry standard reasonable compromise between the sound quality and file size.
By the way, iTunes encoder is really good – Apple is packaging completely professional subroutines into their consumer software code.
The upgrade section stinks. Some of these tracks I sampled before going out and actually buying the CD, so why am I being forced to pay an extra 30 cents to upgrade when I can burn them as AIFF’s? They need to allow you to choose which tracks you want to upgrade.
apple should have gone all the way and offerd lossless as an option. too bad. all my files are in lossless and have more deepth and and the image quality of the musicians in space and other psycho-acoustic cues which can re-create a live performance are more vivid are rely on higher bit rates.
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