First of all, with iTunes Plus all the music tracks are DRM-free and feature 256 kbps AAC encoding for extremely high quality audio. In fact, Apple claims that this new format makes the tracks “virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings.” DRM stands for “digital rights management,” so the new tracks no longer have restrictions when it comes to converting the files to different formats for use on non-Apple devices, and there’s also no limit on the number of computers you can play your purchased songs on. This offers a much greater degree of flexibility when it comes to how you use the music you’ve purchased.

Some people might not have taken notice of these new changes, but everyone who’s used to purchasing 99-cent tracks has most certainly noticed that as of April 2009 all their favorite songs have a brand new price: $1.29. This might not seem like much, but paying a 30% premium for DRM-free tracks and higher quality audio can certainly add up fast when you’re the type of person who buys several albums at a time.

So here’s the big question: do you upgrade all the existing tracks you’ve collected in your iTunes library over the past several years? It’s easy enough to do with a “one-click option,” but before you click, you might want to consider these pros and cons:

Price

It will cost you 30 cents to upgrade each track, or $3 per album. If you have, say, 200 albums in iTunes that could cost you a hefty $600!

Audio Quality

The older version tracks are already 128 kbps format, which produces very high quality audio. You might want to compare the 256 kbps and 128 kbps side-by-side before you pay big bucks to convert your whole collection to see if you even notice a difference. Most people don’t!

Compatibility

Do you have a new audio system or other device or application that doesn’t support AAC? If you’re a Windows person, it’s important to know that Windows Media Player isn’t compatible with the AAC format. With the new DRM-free tracks you can easily convert the files to MP3 format and won’t have to worry about compatibility issues.

Quality vs. Quantity

What’s more important to you, quality or quantity? You can fit twice as many 128 kbps files on your iPod as the 256 kbps files, and if you want all your music to fit in your pocket you might have a big reason to stick to the smaller files. The newest iPod shuffle with 4GB of storage holds 1000 songs – but only 500 if they’re the new 256 kbps files.

A year ago when Apple launched iTunes Plus, you still had the option of buying the lower quality format for a cheaper price. Now, like it or not, we all have to pay a little bit more for our favorite iTunes songs. But we do have an option when it comes to the tracks we already own. So, are YOU going to upgrade?

But… iTunes Plus DRM-free music comes in .m4a format which is based on the MPEG-4 part 14 standard. Problem is, far more devices don’t recognize what to do with .m4a than do (and its video sibling, .m4v). MP3 is a far more popular format.

So, can you convert .m4a files into.mp3 files? Yes you can, and you can do it all from within iTunes (iTunes 8)! Here’s how:

1. Click on Edit -> Preferences…. From the General tab click on Import Settings… button.

2. Change the Import Using drop down box to MP3 Encoder.

3. From the Settings drop down box select Custom… and choose a Stereo Bit Rate of 256Kbps.

4. Click OK, OK and OK.

5. Now find a file that you want to convert, right-click on it and select Create MP3 Version and an MP3 copy will be created.

Note that you’ll have now both versions of the song in your library, so you’ll have to do a little housekeeping.

Note that if you want to upgrade your previously purchased iTunes tracks to DRM free, you need to pay 30 cents per song. You can’t pick and choose which tracks to upgrade. Start by going to the iTunes Store home page, and clicking on “Upgrade My Library” under the “Quick Links” heading. Once there, you’ll see a list of all the songs and albums that are available for upgrading, with a price next to each. But the important number to look at is the price next to the buy button, since that’s how much it’ll cost to upgrade your library.

So if have an extensive music collection with many songs (i.e. 500 songs) purchased from iTunes and wanted to get them freed from DRM protection, you will have to pay USD150 for the upgrade. And in order to listen to them with your MP3 player or mobile phone music player, you still need a further step – convert the AAC music to MP3 one by one (as the steps show above). It not only messes your iTunes library up but also costs you a great deal of time and money. Therefore, if you really want to play the previously purchased music tracks from iTunes Store with MP3 players or mobile phone music players, you just need to get TuneClone Audio Converter to help to remove the iTunes DRM protection and convert the iTunes music to the popular MP3 format. Also, if you get iTunes Plus DRM-free music files and want to play them with the MP3 players or mobile phone music players incompatible with Apple AAC format, you can still use TuneClone to turn them into MP3 format, saving the time to create MP3 version for the songs one by one.