It doesn't use the tags, it looks up your account history. The MacBook Pro I'm sitting in front of doesn't have any of the music it's offering to upgrade to iTunes Plus.

Good to know. Apparently most of my music just isn't in iTunes Plus yet.

Honestly, if you don't think a piece of music is worth 30¢, you don't really deserve to listen to it.

I thought it was worth 99c when I bought it. I don't think it's going to be worth $570 just to strip off a DRM feature that doesn't actually bother me.

Ah, I thought you were replying with regard to the question "Anyone care to guess how low online music will go?"

In the case of upgrading, I don't disagree. Sorry for the wrongful callout, it just drives me nuts when people have thousands of songs and listen to music all the time and say "it isn't worth paying for."

Holy living fuck, I just did the math on how much that upgrade price means I spent on music over the last few years.

Tell me about it. Mine was $430 and I had a serious double take. On the up side, a decent chunk of my music was purchased with the gift cards you get from having an Apple Visa card.

Seriously!

You saved some time by downloading from iTunes rather than via bittorrent. Was that time worth thousands of dollars?

I also think it's wrong to take music without paying for it.

s/take/copy/

You see, I carefully didn't use the word "steal" to avoid the copyfight pedantry, but that wasn't enough for you. "Copying" commercial music that you didn't pay for is unethical, just like "copying" a typeface family, "copying" a website design, or "copying" and black-labeling a GPL'd software package.

I know, right! I mean, if music weren't free to produce and distribute it'd be one thing, but since it is, why doesn't everybody use bittorrent?!?!

sigh

Those thousands of dollars went to pay for the time of the people who created the work that I paid for. Kind of like people pay me for my time.

He's referring to the upgrade cost, not the actual price.