Variable Pricing hits iTunes

As announced at Mac World 2009, today apple put into effect variable pricing within the iTunes music store. This means songs will be priced at $0.69, $0.99 or $1.29 based on the artist’s popularity.
To my dismay most artists raised their prices, or kept their prices the same at 99 cents. I have yet to see a song on iTunes’ “top songs” list priced at 69 cents. Apple also kicked in effect full iTunes plus support, so now all songs on the iTunes music store are “plus”. iTunes plus is a feature where songs are DRM free, and support a higher audio bit rate which results in near studio audio quality .