If you remember back to January, Apple stated that iTunes would be DRM-free and have a tiered pricing system in place within the coming months. This is now a reality. All the music available on the iTunes Store is now in 256Kbps AAC encoding, which is of a similar sound quality to original recordings. Apple had been in the process of converting the huge library since The Macworld keynote, but now the crossover has been completed.

Online retailer Amazon has teamed up with the 800 lb. gorilla of search engines, Google, to announce a new online music store that will allow users to purchase MP3s from Amazon via mobile devices using Google’s new “Android” operating system. Apple immediately announced it would be discontinued, as it “replicates functionality found in iTunes.”

Okay, I made that last bit up.

From Wired:

Owners of the device will be able to browse, search, preview and purchase music on the Amazon MP3 store using the phone’s cellular connection. In order for purchased MP3s to download, the phone must be connected via Wi-Fi. (The mobile iTunes store, on the other hand, remains completely offline without WiFi.)

Oooh, burn!

This morning I was l listening to a newly ripped CD in iTunes when I came to the “secret song.” Bands sometimes put secret songs at the end of their albums. Usually, you have to either forget the CD was playing, or just fast forward until you start hearing music again. But, what if the secret song is awesome? What if you want to have it as its own separate file? iTunes actually makes this quite easy.