At Macworld in January, Apple announced that they would be introducing three tiers of pricing to the iTunes Store. Those new pricing tiers are now active. The pricing tiers on the US iTunes Store are now 69¢, 99¢, and $1.29. The good news for modern music buyers is that out of the top ten songs on the store, only three [later in the roll-out] six of them are priced at the top tier of $1.29 – one of which is “Boom Boom Pow” by the Black Eyed Peas.

None of the top 100 songs are priced at the lower 69¢ price. Catalog items like Creedence Clearwater Revival‘s Greatest Hits do not reflect this new budget pricing tier. That album even contains a few premium tracks like “Bad Moon Rising” and “Down on the Corner.”  However, the full album is priced at a very reasonable $6.99. Finding a 69¢ song on the iTunes Store is like hunting for Easter eggs. I finally found some by looking at Kraftwerk. “Numbers” is priced at 69¢ along with six other songs. Still, this change isn’t as bad as one could have imagined. At the time of this writing only 33% of the top 100 songs are priced at an elevated level and one could have easily assumed the entire 100 songs would be $1.29.

I will continue to watch the pricing levels and will report on any large scale trends that differ from what we see today.