Ol' Blue Eyes is back at iTunes Plus

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 31 May 2007 02:47

Your IT - Home IT

Apple and EMI made good their promise to deliver higher-quality, DRM-free tracks by the end of May - and golden oldies feature strongly in initial sales.

As previously announced, iTunes Plus songs cost $US1.29. We now know that's $A2.19. Previously purchased songs can be upgraded for $US0.30 or $A0.50, and there's a 'one click' option to upgrade all EMI content in an iTunes library at once at $US0.30/$A0.50 per song or $US3.00/$A5.10 for most albums. (The reason for the extra $A0.10 is anyone's guess.)

"Our customers are very excited about the freedom and amazing sound quality of iTunes Plus," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "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. "Consumers are going to love listening to higher quality iTunes Plus tracks from their favorite EMI artists with no usage restrictions."

iTunes 7.2 is required to preview or purchase iTunes Plus tracks.

The lists of top songs on iTunes Plus show that people are mainly buying old favourites in the new format. Walking On Sunshine (Katrina and the Waves), Bette Davis Eyes (Kim Carnes), Have I Told You Lately? (Van Morrison), The House of the Rising Sun (The Animals), I Am Woman (Helen Reddy), A Good Heart (Feargal Sharkey) and Cars (Gary Numan) are just a few of the golden oldies being bought by Australians.

US buyers are picking up some tracks from those eras, including Start Me Up (The Rolling Stones), Do You Really Want To Hurt Me (Boy George and Culture Club) and I Get Around (The Beach Boys), but they're also going back a generation and picking up Ain't That A Kick In The Head and Volare (Dean Martin); Fever (Peggy Lee); Unforgettable (Nat "King" Cole) and Come Fly With Me, I've Got The World On A String and Witchcraft (Frank Sinatra).

A variety of third-party add-ons for iTunes (the Mac OS X version at least) allow users to easily transfer tracks to Bluetooth devices such as mobile phones and via USB to any gadget that presents as a storage device (phones and most MP3 players). While we haven't seen any that provide full iPod-style synchronisation, we expect these little pieces of software to gain fresh popularity now the iTunes Store is selling DRM-free tracks that will play on any device that can handle AAC files.