How it that evil? You're getting something other than what you originally paid for.

I know I paid for a DRM track; its just bittersweet that I'd have to pay for the same song again to not have DRM. That nets Apple 0 good/evil points in my book.

You don't have to have it without DRM, and you don't have to pay if you want it to not have DRM. What you're paying less than full price for is a completely different bitstream that happens to be encoded from the same original source. It's not unlike getting a credit toward a CD because you happened to own a tape of the same music, which I think you can agree is a rather novel concept.

I can't agree with the novel concept angle here.

There is no need for analogy here. This is precisely getting a new version of software, which is not in any way novel.

A better physical analogy is paying shipping and handling for mailing in a DRM'd CD that won't play on some of the players you own for a DRM-less CD.