Today Apple's new "tiered" pricing structure took effect on the iTunes store. Tracks are now priced in three "tiers," the newly released and very popular tracks are $1.29, a very large number (in fact, most tracks)are still $0.99, and some are priced at $0.69. All ten million plus tracks are now DRM free, and are iTunes Plus, which means that you can copy them, burn them as many times as you wish to CD, and play them on an unlimited number of players, though you may have to convert tracks if your player doesn't support AAC, the encoding standard Apple uses. The good news, aside from the absence of Digital Rights Management restrictions, is that all the tracks are encoded at the better sounding 256 kbps, which of course also means the files are a bit larger in size.

It is true that newly released songs are $1.29; it's also true that most tracks are still $0.99. That said, I've as yet been unable to find a single track at $0.69. Perhaps those will appear over time; I note that when Phil Schiller announced this tiered pricing, back at the January MacWorld, he indicated quite specifically that the price changes were at the behest of the music companies, not something Apple wanted. I note that that's explicitly stated in this January 6, 2009 Apple press release. I actually believe the press release; I've been following the grumblings of the music industry about the universal pricing structure since the iTunes store opened.

There's some distinctly not pleased reactions to the pricing change; for example, Rick C. Hodgin at TG Daily, and Peter Kafka of MediaMemo. This Reuters story asserts that record companies executives claim that "for every one song they raise to $1.29 they will be reducing 10 songs to 69 cents." That would be quite lovely, but I'm not seeing any sign of it at present.

I'm willing to wait and see. I like, very much, that the tracks are encoded at twice the bit rate as earlier releases, that the tracks are all now DRM free, but I confess to probably checking prices for albums at Amazon, in case there's a difference; Amazon, at least for now, is still selling most songs at $0.99, or less. In the meantime, if anyone does see a track for $0.69, let me know, would you?