Ease into the Switch

The entire iTunes Store catalog is now iTunes Plus. This means that none of the music purchased from the iTunes Store contains DRM. It also means that all of the music on the store is recorded at a higher quality.

Apple started this long, slow march with a letter from Steve Jobs titled Thoughts on Music. They updated us on the status of their efforts at Macworld in January and began accelerating their conversion to iTunes Plus then as well.

Learn more about upgrading to iTunes Plus, including what benefits may make it worth it for you.

At Macworld in January, Apple announced that they would be introducing three tiers of pricing to the iTunes Store. Those new pricing tiers are now active. The pricing tiers on the US iTunes Store are now 69¢, 99¢, and $1.29. The good news for modern music buyers is that out of the top ten songs on the store, only three [later in the roll-out] six of them are priced at the top tier of $1.29 – one of which is “Boom Boom Pow” by the Black Eyed Peas.

None of the top 100 songs are priced at the lower 69¢ price. Catalog items like Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Greatest Hits do not reflect this new budget pricing tier. That album even contains a few premium tracks like “Bad Moon Rising” and “Down on the Corner.”  However, the full album is priced at a very reasonable $6.99. Finding a 69¢ song on the iTunes Store is like hunting for Easter eggs. I finally found some by looking at Kraftwerk. “Numbers” is priced at 69¢ along with six other songs. Still, this change isn’t as bad as one could have imagined. At the time of this writing only 33% of the top 100 songs are priced at an elevated level and one could have easily assumed the entire 100 songs would be $1.29.

I will continue to watch the pricing levels and will report on any large scale trends that differ from what we see today.

I’ve mentioned before that one of the ways Apple is lessening their impact on the environment is through smaller packages.

Smaller packages take fewer raw materials to construct. This means less energy needs to go into harvesting those materials and producing the packaging. It also means less material needs to be recycled and less material will undoubtedly end up in landfills.

Reduced packaging also means that more units can be transported or stored in the same amount of space. Fewer plane or train miles are required to transport the computers and other devices from the manufacturing plant to the point of sale. Retail stores can stock more Macs and iPhones in the same square-footage (or less) store which puts fewer demands on real estate acreage and requires less energy for lighting, cooling, or heating.

Author and developer Jeff LaMarche just got a 17″ MacBook Pro and offers some photographic evidence of the progression of smaller and smaller packages from Apple.

Apple® today introduced the all-new iPod® shuffle, the world’s smallest music player at nearly half of the size of the previous model, and the first music player that talks to you. The revolutionary new VoiceOver feature enables iPod shuffle to speak your song titles, artists and playlist names. The third generation iPod shuffle is significantly smaller than a AA battery, holds up to 1,000 songs and is easier to use with all of the controls conveniently located on the earphone cord. With the press of a button, you can play, pause, adjust volume, switch playlists and hear the name of the song and artist. iPod shuffle features a gorgeous new aluminum design with a built-in stainless steel clip that makes it ultra-wearable.

“Imagine your music player talking to you, telling you your song titles, artists and playlist names,” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of iPod and iPhone™ Product Marketing. “The amazingly small new iPod shuffle takes a revolutionary approach to how you listen to your music by talking to you, also making it the first iPod shuffle with playlists.”

iPod shuffle is based on Apple’s incredibly popular shuffle feature, which randomly selects songs from your music library. And now, when you can’t remember the name of a song or an artist playing, with the press of a button iPod shuffle tells you the name of the song and artist. iPod shuffle can even tell you status information, such as battery life. With the ability to hold up to 1,000 songs and the VoiceOver feature, you can now easily switch between multiple playlists on your iPod shuffle. iPod shuffle can speak 14 languages including English, Czech, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

The new iPod shuffle comes in silver or black and features a sleek and ultra-wearable design with a built-in stainless steel clip. iPod shuffle is the smallest music player in the world and is incredibly easy to clip to almost anything and take with you everywhere you go. iPod shuffle features up to 10 hours of battery life.*

Pricing & Availability 
The third generation 4GB iPod shuffle is now shipping and comes in silver or black for a suggested price of $79 (US) through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers. iPod shuffle comes with the Apple Earphones with Remote and the iPod shuffle USB cable. iPod shuffle requires a Mac® with a USB 2.0 port, Mac OS® X v10.4.11 or later and iTunes® 8.1 or later; or a Windows PC with a USB 2.0 port and Windows Vista, Windows XP Home or Professional (Service Pack 3) or later and iTunes 8.1.

*Battery life and number of charge cycles vary by use and settings. See www.apple.com/batteries for more information. Song capacity is based on four minutes per song and 128-Kbps AAC encoding; in 256-Kbps AAC format, song capacity is up to 500 songs; actual capacity varies by encoding method and bit rate.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

Grab the song “Camote” from Novalima on the iTunes Store if you’re in the mood for a nice latin beat. It’s the free iTunes Discovery Download of the week. Apple has a free song available every week, but I think this one is a cut above the rest. Evidentially, camote is the Aztec word for sweet potato. You learn something new everyday…