Just before Tony Bennett sang goodbye to the Moscone Center faithful with “I Left My Heart In San Francisco,” Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) confirmed at its final Macworld Expo that it will drop DRM copy protection across 10 million iTunes Store songs from all majors, as per CNET’s earlier report. The move will apply to eight million tracks as of today and will extend to a further two million by the end of the quarter. Bringing to a close what have sometimes been fractious label negotiations, Apple is also introducing three new pricing tiers for iTunes tracks — $0.69 for older tracks, $0.99 for recent tracks and $1.29 for new hits. Marketing VP Phil Schiller, taking Steve Jobs’ traditional keynote spot, also said Apple is extending the ability to buy iTunes songs wirelessly via iPhone from merely WiFi to 3G mobile networks; also from today, tracks will be priced the same and have the same bitrate as desktop iTunes downloads.
EMI already began offering higher-fidelity, DRM-free AAC files back in May 2007, after Steve Jobs said Apple would “embrace (DRM-free) in a heartbeat if the big four would license their music (that way) … because DRMs haven