Two doors have been opened by Apple during today’s MacWorld keynote. The first is tiered pricing and the second is DRM-free songs. Both new features have their positives and negatives. Here’s the skinny: Apple’s catalog of songs in iTunes will be available for one of three prices. Either $0.69, $0.99 or $1.29. The downloads will be available in the AAC format and encoded at 256kbps.

Tiered pricing means that the record label will have the final decision which price to sell a song at. I can’t find anything on the store more or less than $0.99 at the moment, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not coming. Hopefully this means that indie artists can sell their music cheaper to promote sales, but right now Apple’s only talking about the majors. This isn’t totally new, as some EMI music was available DRM free and for $1.29 in the past.

The files aren’t mp3s. Apple has opted to go with the AAC format, which restricts what you can play them back on. There’s hope, as you will be allowed to convert the files into mp3s. This doesn’t mean that you name and e-mail address will be stripped from the watermark in the file, but at least it means you can listen back on your super cool Microsoft Zune. Just not on December 31st of a leap year.

Are you able to find anything cheaper than $0.99 yet? A quick search has turned up nothing so far. I’m also struggling to think of an mp3 store that sells restricted playback files.

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