With one day left in the month of May, Apple and record label EMI made good on their promise to start selling higher-quality digital music without annoying copying limits (so-called digital rights management, or DRM, technology). The new files are $1.29 each although buying a whole album of these “iTunes Plus” files doesn’t cost any more than the $9.99 charged for the older, DRM-locked files. That’s a new incentive to buy whole albums that may have some effect. You’re supposed to be able to upgrade any songs you purchased from EMI artists like Norah Jones, the Rolling Stones or Coldplay, from protected files to higher-quality, unprotected files for 30 cents. I had some problems upgrading and very little is even available to upgrade yet, but more on that below.
First, you have to download an upgrade to the iTunes program itself, version 7.2. That installed without a hitch. I started it up and connected to the iTunes store. There were a couple of links to iTunes Plus spread around the home page. I clicked one and was taken to a preference screen about whether I wanted iTunes to show Plus content whenever it was available. I said yes. Then I was shown a page of albums available as Plus files. But there was no indication of how to upgrade my old songs, aka the songs I really like.
I jumped over to Apple’s support forums and checked out the iTunes discussion boards and an FAQ on iTunes Plus. The FAQ indicated there should be a page called “Upgrade my Library” but I didn’t see that page or any link to it. On the forums, some people had it and some didn’t. I decided to try buying a Plus track — Paul McCartney’s Band on the Run. After the track downloaded and there was a slight delay for “processing,” I again clicked on one of the iTunes Plus links on the home page. This time, lo and behold, at the top of the page was a big grey button for upgrading my library. Yes.
Unfortunately, even once I got it all working, there were only 23 songs available in my library to upgrade despite the zillions of EMI-owned tracks I’ve bought from iTunes over the past few years. One David Bowie tune (China Girl but not Young Americans or Modern Love), one old Joss Stone album (Mind, Body & Soul — not The Soul Sessions thus far), etc. When you hit the upgrade button, iTunes asks whether you want to save or delete the old files. I chucked ’em. Then it proceeds to download the new files which take up about twice as much room as the older files. I was relieved to see that despite the file swapping, iTunes preserved all of my metadata (star ratings, number of times track has played and so on) from the old files.
After I bought the 23 upgrades, the Upgrade page admitted that not everything was Plus-ified yet:
I guess I’ll have to check back often! I think as the other record labels see EMI collecting a bunch of “icing on the cake” upgrade revenue, they’ll be eager to sign up for Plusification, too.
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