Apple has made it official that the iTunes Store is offering eight million of its 10 million songs in DRM-free format starting now, with the remaining two million songs expected to get the same treatment by the end of March. Additional changes have been made. Read on for the full scoop.

“Beginning today, all four major music labels—Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, Warner Music Group, and EMI, along with thousands of independent labels, are now offering their music in iTunes Plus, Apple’s DRM-free format with higher-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings,” the official Apple report reads.

Besides announcing the much-anticipated removal of the DRM system employed by the company to stop the unauthorized copying of content, Apple has also confirmed during yesterday's keynote that iPhone users can now download songs directly onto their devices over the 3G network. No additional fees will be charged, the company says.

Furthermore, the fact that songs on iTunes will soon be available at three price points has also been made public by Phil Schiller at the Apple presentation yesterday. Particularly, April 2009 will see music on iTunes being made available at 69 cents, 99 cents, and $1.29, with most albums remaining priced at $9.99.

“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,” Steve Jobs reveals. “And in April, based on what the music labels charge Apple, songs on iTunes will be available at one of three price points—69 cents, 99 cents, and $1.29—with many more songs priced at 69 cents than $1.29,” Apple's CEO confirms.

The Cupertino-based company has been using the digital rights management (DRM) system to lock musical tracks into Apple software and hardware. Thanks to the DRM encoding, content purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Store could only work on Apple devices (the iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV). To achieve this, the company created its own proprietary AAC file format.