When Apple announced in January that all music in the iTunes Store would go DRM-free later in the year, I applauded the move. Sure, it came at the expense of the flat-rate 99¢ pricing model. But I was thrilled that I would finally be able to buy albums and song, for instance, Deutsche Grammophon's wonderful DG Concerts series, without feeling guilty. And I would finally have the chance to upgrade the vast amount of DRM-protected content I purchased — naïve as I was back in the earlier part of this decade — to the DRM-free format, which also offers vastly superior audio quality.

Today was the magic DRM-free transition day. According to Macworld, every single track and album on the iTunes store now comes without DRM and in higher-quality 256kbps AAC encoding. Unfortunately, though, there are some hiccups.

First, I have yet to find a single track for 69¢. There are many tracks, mostly new popular singles, which hit the higher $1.29 price point and many tracks whose prices haven't changed from their classic 99¢. Not even recordings of obscure French baroque music from composers most people have never heard of go for less than 99¢. I was secretly thrilled about the new tired pricing system in iTunes because I tend to buy lots of unpopular music, mostly from obscure classical and jazz groups playing obscure classical and jazz pieces, and much less popular music. Yet I suspect far fewer tracks moved down to 69¢ than moved up to $1.29.

Second, my iTunes music library still has 443 protected purchased tracks from the iTunes store. I would be more than happy to pay the 30¢ per track — or over $130 in total — to upgrade. But apparently those tracks either no longer exist in the iTunes store, or a programmer at Apple needs to work overtime this weekend to fix the glitch.

Of course, none of this stopped me from snapping up the new recording of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos by the Academy of Ancient Music. Highly recommended.