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The Apple CEO told the Wall Street Journal that the price cut - from 99 to 79p per track and £9.99 to £7.99 per album - was being phased in over a couple of days. He also confirmed that a number of independent labels have joined iTunes Plus and their tracks will be available without usage restrictions and at the higher bitrate.

As a result large parts of the iTunes catalogue will soon be available with twice the bitrate and none of the usage resrictions but with no premium price to pay for the

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privilege.

It isn't yet clear whether iTunes users will be able to upgrade previous purchases for no exta charge. Currently Apple is retaining the 20p upgrade charge for tracks listed in the Upgrade My Library section of iTunes Plus, even for tracks that are now being sold at the new, lower price.

UPDATE: Apple has provided a few more details about the expansion of iTunes Plus and the reduced price of DRM-free music on iTunes.

"Offering customers the largest catalogue of DRM-free music in the world, Apple today expanded iTunes Plus to more than two million tracks while at the same time lowering the price of those tracks to just 79p" it said. "In addition to artists from EMI's digital catalogue, iTunes Plus now includes artists from Sub Pop, Nettwerk, Beggars Group, IODA, The Orchard and many others. All iTunes Plus tracks feature DRM-free music with high-quality 256Kb/sec AAC encoding, offering audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings."

Apple has yet to give any indication whether it will stop charging, or cut the price, of upgrading DRM purchases. Currently the Upgrade My Library feature still costs 20p per song.