I was on Digg the other day and heard some ramblings of iTunes going DRM-Free.  Did a little digging and found this article confirming it.  Well…its about time.  Before I became aware of AmazonMP3 (actually before it existed) I started using iTunes.  Between 2006-2007 I downloaded about 600 songs from iTunes.  When I first started I really didn’t care about the DRM.  However, when I saw that I could ONLY use iTunes to play that music I started to get pretty annoyed.  iTunes is a hog and when your playing a game like CS:S, TF2, or other graphically intensive games it drags you down.  I pretty much stopped using iTunes Music Store for my downloads after I discovered AmazonMP3 which is not only DRM-Free, but also cheaper in most cases.  I converted about 250 of my songs to iTunes Plus (DRM-Free, Higher Bit rate) for about $62 ($.30 per song).  I don’t mind the charge.  iTunes plus cost $1.30 anyway so that’s what I would have been paying for the songs on iTunes anyway.

The question is will I go back to using iTunes to get my music?  Probably not.  iTunes Plus music still cost $1.30 for DRM-Free music compared to $.99 or $.89 from AmazonMp3.  Also, I have gotten quite a few good albums from AmazonMp3 for $4 on release day.  With Apple being so stubborn, I doubt they will be able to beat that.