Today Apple released the long-awaited (by me) upgraded EMI songs on the iTunes Music Store. These songs are twice the bitrate (256kbps vs. 128kbps) and have no DRM, making them free to change to another format to put on any device you own.

Obviously I wasn’t alone in looking forward to upgrading my songs - I have never seen the iTMS running so slowly. Four of my songs qualify for the upgrade (which costs 50c per song in Australia), and downloading them is torturously slow. Normally any iTMS download will saturate our link (around 160KB/sec), but right now I’m seeing 50-70KB/sec downloads. I can’t imagine how much business they’re doing. Here’s hoping the other labels wake up and see the future.

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