ITunes Plus Offers Better Sound for IPods

Apple has announced that their new iTunes Plus service is available for upgrade and use by iTunes customers. The free upgrade to Plus is now offered when iPod owners log into their iTunes accounts. The upgrade will only affect the iTunes media management program. Songs, movies, and other media already on customer iPods will not be affected.

iTunes Plus only changes the quality and compatibility of the music you can purchase. Before, songs purchased on iTunes were only available with an audio bit rate of 128 kbps. Songs available through iTunes Plus will now feature an audio bit rate of 256 kbps and AAC encoding. This means the sound quality will now be twice as good, and songs will no longer feature DRM (digital rights management) encoding, which would limit the number of times you burned it, the types of players that could play it, and the number of computers you could share it on. Now, songs will be playable on virtually any computer or media player (iPod or not) and can be burned an unlimited number of times.

The upgrade will affect songs and music videos as well. The audio on music videos will be upgraded to the new high-quality format, but the video quality will remain the same.

Currently, not all songs are available in iTunes Plus at the new bitrate and encoding. As these songs are made available by music labels, they will be added to the library for purchase, at the same price as their original versions. For customers who have already purchased songs in the original format, iTunes will offer upgrades to the new high-quality format, which will cost 30 cents per song, 60 cents per music video, and entire albums can be upgraded for 30% of the album price. Music received for free will not be eligible for upgrade, it must be purchased at full price. For customers with vast music collections on their iPods, the upgrade process could be very costly, which has led to some complaints.

Once the new versions of songs and videos are made available, the original lower-quality, DRM encoded versions will no longer be available. iTunes customers will still be able to use gift certificates and gift cards already purchased on the new versions, since the price will be the same. While many complain about the cost to upgrade their current collection, most iTunes customers welcome the change, which will free up the music on their iPods to be played on cheaper media players. iTunes Plus is now available worldwide.

Source: Apple.com