Apple officially lowers cost of DRM-free tunes in the UK to 79p

Increases catalogue with independent labels too

17 October 2007 14:28 GMT / By Amy-Mae Elliott

Apple has announced that it has expanded its iTunes Plus offering to over two million tracks and lowered the price of all iTunes Plus tracks to 79p in the UK, with similar reductions in the States.

The iTunes Plus catalogue (the largest DRM-free catalogue in the world, according to Apple) now includes artists from Sub Pop, Nettwerk, Beggars Group, IODA, The Orchard and many others, along with EMI's digital catalogue.

"iTunes Plus has been incredibly popular with our customers and now we’re making it available at an even more affordable price", said Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of iTunes.

"We're adding over two million tracks from key independent labels in addition to EMI’s digital catalogue and look forward to even more labels and artists making their music available on iTunes Plus."

iTunes and EMI only began offering their DRM-free music in the UK in May this year, leading to speculation that the sales figures have not been good for songs (which did cost 20p extra per track) for them to have seen a price cut so soon.

No figures have been released on how many DRM-free tracks have sold, EMI did comment earlier this year, but only to say to initial results were "good".

The main reason attributed to this price cut is the launch of Amazon's strong rival DRM-free MP3 service in the States.

Full tags

Audio, Music downloads, iTunes, Apple, EMI