Apple Dropping iTunes Plus (DRM Free) Song Prices to $.99?

In May, Apple launched the Digital Rights Management (DRM) free portion of their Music Store called iTunes Plus. The copy-protection free songs sold for $1.29 and were encoded at a higher 256kbps quality AAC.

Earlier today, some users had noticed that certain iTunes Plus songs were now selling for $.99 instead of $1.29. At first it wasn't clear if the pricing discrepancy was simply a mistake.

Ars Technica is now reporting that Apple is in the midst of expanding iTunes Plus to include indie music labels and also dropping the price of all iTunes Plus songs to $.99. Apple will reportedly keep the old DRMed songs at $.99.

The article speculates that the price drop is a reaction to Amazon's DRM MP3 Store which has been very well received. Amazon's MP3 DRM-free store launched 3 weeks ago and provides 256kbps MP3s that can be seamlessly loaded into your existing iTunes library.