Apple releases iTunes 7.2 & iTunes Plus DRM-free music

[Wondermonkey]

In advance of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ appearance at the D: All Things Digital Conference tomorrow in Carlsbad, California, Apple has released iTunes 7.2, an upgrade to its free digital media management software. Version 7.2 adds one feature—previously-announced support for the downloading of DRM-free songs, now dubbed “iTunes Plus,” which as noted by Apple in iTunes Help “have no usage restrictions and feature higher-quality recording.” Initially spearheaded by the music label EMI, but also backed by independent labels, the songs sell for $1.29 each and use 256Kbps AAC encoding for superior sound quality than standard iTunes Store music downloads.

According to Apple, “[t]he first time you buy an iTunes Plus song, you specify whether to make all future purchases iTunes Plus versions (when available). ... If you already have iTunes Store purchases that are now available as iTunes Plus downloads, you may upgrade your existing purchases.” Both features, and changes thereto, can be accessed through your account at the iTunes Store.

[Peench]

WTH? They're meeting in Carlsbad and they didn't send me an invite? I'm totally crashing that party tomorrow.

Very cool. Do they know if this version of iTunes is okay to install on PC's? I don't want to install it and have it destroy my OS.

[Wondermonkey]

Originally Posted by Peench

WTH? They're meeting in Carlsbad and they didn't send me an invite? I'm totally crashing that party tomorrow.

Very cool. Do they know if this version of iTunes is okay to install on PC's? I don't want to install it and have it destroy my OS.

I don't think Vista is called an OS, I believe it's a POS if I'm not mistaken. I installed it at work and I'm on XP there and had no problems. I don't know about Vista though, I'm unfamiliar with POSs.

[Peench]

Nice. I guess if I had a MAC (yep, all caps babee), I wouldn't have an issue. I'd just be waiting an extra ... uh, how many months? for the next iteration of the OS.

Okay, sorry for the keezy. Does this mean I have to install the newest version to upgrade to the latest firmware on my iPod? I haven't upgraded it at all, but apparently the DICE unit I bought for my car last November and haven't had time to install requires the latest firmware. I imagine they might have fixed the memory hog issue on Vista with this latest version so it probably can't be a bad thing. I just have bad memories of one of my buddies calling me about his entire system bombing out b/c of a new version of iTunes.

[Wondermonkey]

Originally Posted by Peench

Okay, sorry for the keezy. Does this mean I have to install the newest version to upgrade to the latest firmware on my iPod? I haven't upgraded it at all, but apparently the DICE unit I bought for my car last November and haven't had time to install requires the latest firmware. I imagine they might have fixed the memory hog issue on Vista with this latest version so it probably can't be a bad thing. I just have bad memories of one of my buddies calling me about his entire system bombing out b/c of a new version of iTunes.

Well, the iTunes versions and iPod firmwares are completely independent of each other, so you don't have to do anything I think. I would upgrade your firmware, just because they release them quite often.

One cool feature of the new iTunes is as soon as I logged into it, it scanned my music that I bought from the iTunes store (not much) and said I could upgrade 40 of my DRM songs to 256 bitrate and DRM free for $3. Nice feature. I didn't do it, because I don't care, but if I did, that's not bad at all.

[Peench]

That is a pretty cool feature. Does it upgrade automatically or do I have to download and install the new version?

I stopped using it on my Vista machine b/c when I used it it would hog all my resources (something about indexing). I made a quick change to what it indexed (removed XML files) and it seemed to fix it. But I still haven't used it since then.

If I connect my iPod to upgrade my firmware, will it wipe out my songs? I have never connected my main iPod (30GB video) to it and have always transferred my songs via anapod (drag and drop without need for scanning all 100 GB of my music). I installed iTunes originally b/c I won a shuffle (the new tiny one) and I wanted to put some songs on it... but then I got bizzy and haven't had a chance to do it yet. I don't want to upgrade the firmware if its gonna wipe out my music tho.