JB HiFi currently have a sale on (until Sunday) with 20% of all CD and DVD ticket prices. No "unless otherwise marked". All.

I went a bit crazy.

But I still didn't buy no Chinese Democracy.

Had a quick play with iTunes.

Almost everything I looked up was iTunes Plus. A few things were not, particularly some more obscure indie stuff, but they had a lot ready to go. I'm impressed.

I keep a list of "stuff I want" and of that list the songs that were not already iTunes Plus (about 12), only three are still not.

All the prices I remember were still $1.69 each. I didn't see anything cheaper or more expensive.

iTunes Music Store Finally Ditches DRM, Adds New Prices [Wired.com]

Apparently this is to happen immediately [Update: "Gradually, all done by April"].

This would be big news if Amazon.MP3, MySpace and Wallmart hadn't already been doing it for ages. As such, it's more "about friggin' time".

It's slightly big news if it includes Australia as currently the only site selling non-DRM Big Four tracks that I know of is the EMI only MusicHead and only some tracks Telstra BigPond Music.

As part of the deal iTunes will give up the one-price-for-all-tracks and have three prices: 69c, 99c and $1.29.

As is currently the case, you will be able to upgrade your DRMd track to iTunes Plus for 30 cents.

The following is still unanswered:

• Does this include iTunes Australia? If so, what are the prices?
• Is it just the Big Four or are indies included?
• Does this mean all tracks are now "iTunes Plus" or will I still need to check carefully that I'm not about to buy something DRMd?

I'll hopefully check all of this tonight.

If this does include Australia hopefully this will kick competitors into gear and we could finally have an Amazon MP3 equivalent in our poor little backward country.

Much has been said about the pricing, but I couldn't care less. Singles will sell for more, older tracks will sell for less. Whatever.

What I'd still like to see is heavily discounted albums and compilations.

When deciding to buy on iTunes, if I decide I like more than a couple of tracks on an album, I'll go buy the CD. Perhaps I'm a freak, but that's the way it is.

Now at least I hope I won't have to decide not to buy because a "Plus" version isn't available.