iTunes no longer offers a flat rate for music for their customers, nor do they have a limited selection of labels.
Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group and EMI joined iTunes.
With the addition of the music labels in January, Apple now charges different prices for songs: 69 cents, 99 cents and $1.29.
This is compared to the old rate of 99 cents across the board.
The pricing is based on how much each label charges Apple.
Many Auburn students are not in favor of the price change.
"In my opinion, the initial price was high enough to keep me from buying more than a few songs on iTunes," said Amy Kroeger, a senior in aerospace engineering. "The increase definitely makes it more likely that any new music I want will come from other sources or used CD's."
The higher prices are applied to the more well-known artists. Older music will have the lower prices.
Some students feel this decision could be disastrous for the music subsidiary.
"I think it is one of the stupidest moves ever made," said Chase Erickson, a freshman in pre-physical therapy. "It's going to kill the music industry because it promotes illegal downloading of music."
Piracy has been popular in the courts lately. Last week, The Pirate Bay, one of the world's largest BitTorrent search engines, lost a case to the major labels because of illegal downloading.
Daniel Coltey, a senior in aerospace engineering, said his feelings toward iTunes have not changed.
"I'd say that as somebody who doesn't use the service very often, the price increase means for me only that I'm even more likely now to buy the entire album than buy single songs," Coltey said.
Most albums remained $9.99.
The major labels, plus thousands of independent labels, are offering their music on iTunes Plus.
"We are thrilled to be able to offer our iTunes customers DRM-free iTunes Plus songs in high quality audio, and our iPhone 3G customers the ability to download music from iTunes anytime, anywhere over their 3G network at the same price as downloading to your computer or via Wi-Fi," said Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple in a press release.
The iTunes Plus is a digital rights management (DRM) free format.
It offers eight million of the 10 million songs available.
Jobs also announced that customers are able to make unlimited copies of tunes and play them on any device with this change.
Kroeger said Ebay and Amazon are much cheaper.
Amazon and Ebay are close competitors, because they both offer DRM-free downloads.
Amazon.com has more than 6 million songs in their DRM-free selection with most prices starting at 89 cents per song. This started with the launch of the T-Mobile G1 Andriod smart phone in September 2008.
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