Apple today announced that it will start selling music from all four major music companies (Sony BMG, Universal Music, Warner Music and EMI) without digital rights management (DRM) anticopying measures. It also announced that it will start experimenting with different pricing — moving away from its insistence on pricing all songs at 99 cents.

The changes were announced by Philip W. Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco today.

As a concession to the labels, Apple will cut the price of many older and less popular songs to 69 cents beginning in April, while marking up the biggest new hits to $1.29. The base price for moderately popular tracks will remain at 99 cents. Changing the pricing structure was seen as a victory for labels, which have struggled over the past decade with major losses in sales of physical CDs.

Apple started started offering non-DRM downloads in 2007, following an aggreement with EMI (the smallest of the four major record companies), but a new agreement with the remaining three majors expands the program to cover the entire iTunes inventory. The eventual end of DRM seemed inevitable, since major labels had already reached DRM-free deals with other online retailers, such as Amazon and Rhapsody.

Apple will immediately offer 8 million songs without DRM and add the store’s remaining 2 million songs by the end of the quarter.

It’s not immediately clear how large an impact this will provide. Our guess is that the majority of iTunes customers are apathetic or totally ignorant about both DRM and audio bit rates. We also wonder if the small increase in cost for popular tracks won’t drive more customers to less legal avenues for their music. Thoughts?

“Yo Flav, you think we’re gonna sell out?”
“I know if we do, we’ll get the hell out!”

— Public Enemy, “Caught, Can We Get A Witness?”

Since the first time it aired, I wondered like hell what Chuck D’s reaction was to “Flavor of Love.” Mine included the words “what,” “the” and “fuck.” In that order, with a question mark thrown in. And an exclamation mark. Because there’s no doubt that the moment the first show aired, Flavor Flav became a sellout.

As an almost lifelong fan of Public Enemy, that came as a total shock. For Chuck D, the voice and conscience of PE, who knows what that was like, but I would have loved to have seen it.

We’ve talked a bit in Vague Panther’s “Commercial Madness” series about what constitutes a sellout, and the San Francisco Chronicle’s Peter Hartlaub got that question racing around my head again this week with an excellent article about bands selling out. Hartlaub uses AC/DC’s shows this week in Oakland as a hook to argue that AC/DC has always stayed true to what they do, and have never – in his eyes – sold out. He also puts Tom Waits, Steve Earle and NOFX on his “nice list,” while pinning Flav, Ozzy Osbourne and Mötley Crüe as impure.

But, what really constitute a sellout these days? Commercials? Does it depend on what commercial? A radio hit? Inclusion in a movie?

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You really have to love it when an obscure song from the past suddenly becomes a pop culture phenomenon. Remember when we kids who had never even listened to Queen before, fell in love with “Bohemian Rhapsody” because of “Wayne’s World”? Cool, right? And it introduced a new generation to a pretty cool band. But what happened to “Bohemian Rhapsody”? Right. You got unbearably sick of it.

This same thing is happening to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” – or already has happened. I don’t think I ever gave Journey more than a cursory thought past the age of eight until, suddenly, about a year-and-a-half ago, that song started popping up everywhere. It was on “Laguna Beach” (don’t you dare ask how I know that), “The Sopranos” finale, and soon every bar in the City north of Sutter Street had it in constant rotation while 20-somethings who weren’t even born when the song came out, sang their hearts out. I heard the song twice in a half-block walk in the Financial District earlier this week.

It’s time for “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” to end. First, it’s kind of become the de facto anthem for the self-important Silicon Valley cool kid set, which isn’t cool. Second, D.J. AM put out a club version of the song – the musical kiss of death. (Though, this is pretty cool.)

Sorry for the rant, but it’s got to be time to put this to bed. Please stop this song from disturbing my mental health. Stop believin’.

Since we traffic mainly in music over here, I don’t get to link back to my (and perhaps Jay’s) favorite tube on the Internets, Deadspin.com. But the good folks took a little time out from dick jokes to report that none other than Lil Wayne has started blogging for ESPN the Magazine. (And, please, read the comments – they’re brilliant.)

A few fun facts: Wayne is a Packers and Bruins fan, meaning that he might love Pac-10 football almost as much as Uncle Corey loves him for loving Pac-10 football (Update: he meant Boston Bruins, which actually knocks him down a few pegs – Boston and hockey … really Wayne? – I’ll pretend I didn’t read that); he was a fullback when he played football as a kid, which is weird since he’s now 5-foot-6; and he loves tennis – must be the money.

I also love tennis. I had a lot of people over to my place to watch the Wimbledon final this year, and we went crazy. I love Federer but Nadal is my favorite. He’s the man. I love his motivation and his heart is big. He leaves it on the court. And when I found out he still lives with his family despite his success, that was it for me. That’s unbelievable right there.

Awesome. Lil Wayne: Continually finding ways to burrow into Uncle Corey’s cold, black heart.

In my other life – the one where I’m not a world-famous music blogger - I work in the tech industry and pay pretty close attention to the ins-and-outs of the Valley. It’s pretty cool when my worlds collide, both because I’m duly interested in anything having to do with music and tech, but also because the havoc surrounding the music industry and its fights with individuals downloading MP3s, file-sharing services and little ol’ bloggers like ourselves, is one of the most interesting challenges and potential battles of our age.

Where the hell is music going? How can musicians still get paid for thier craft? When will the record companies release their iron grip on the collective nut sack of American music fans? It’s a seriously interesting story, complete with heroes and villains, corporate profit versus a motivated citizenry.

ReadWriteWeb, an outstanding tech blog, recorded a great podcast on the subject, with executives from iMeem, Yahoo! Music and RealNetworks discussing the current state of online music services and the future of the music industry in general. It’s a fascinating discussion with five (including the hosts) very smart people and something near and dear to all music fans’ hearts. Take a listen below:

ReadWriteWeb Live: