Apple has announced that there will be three pricing tiers for its iTunes music store. Tracks will sell for 69¢, 99¢, and $1.29 via a demand-based pricing system. Apple promised that by the end of this quarter, all of it's 10 million iTunes tracks will be DRM-free, and released at the higher-quality 256 kbps iTunes Plus bitrate. The price change policy will go into effect in April. The 69¢ tracks will likely be back catalog songs, while the $1.29 per track price will most likely be exlusive singles and new releases.

Certainly, moving away from DRM is a win for iTunes customers but as for the tiered pricing, it depends on your music shopping habits. If your preference is to listen to the latest tracks then this change will likely represent a 30 percent increase on your music budget (albeit a DRM-free and likely higher-quality increase). For back catalog buyers, the 69¢ per track price will prove welcome, although it remains to be seen how album prices will be affected.

The other big change is that iPhone users can now sample and download iTunes tracks over AT&T's 3G or EDGE networks. Previously, iTunes song downloads, were only available over a Wi-Fi connection. As with the iTunes Apps store, songs over 10MB must be downloaded over a Wi-Fi or a wired connection to your computer. A few hick ups aside, the process worked relatively well. When we attempted to download a longer track, we got a warning message advising as such.

Downloading over 3G was on par with downloading over a Wi-Fi connection, however, downloading via the EDGE network was painfully slow.