Apple goes DRM-free, starts variable pricing

January 06, 2009 Apple is cutting the price of some songs in its market-leading iTunes online store to as little as 69 cents and plans to make every track available without copy protection. In Apple's final appearance at the MacWorld trade show, Apple's top marketing executive, Philip Schiller, said Tuesday that iTunes song prices will come in three tiers: 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29. Apple gave the record labels that flexibility on pricing as it got them to agree to sell all songs free of "digital rights management," or DRM, technology that limits people's ability to copy songs or move them to multiple computers.

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