iTunes to Sell DRM-Free Music!

Today Apple announced that it will start selling DRM-free tracks from the EMI label in it’s popular iTunes Music Store.

The tracks will cost $1.29 but people who currently own tracks under the EMI label can pay only $0.30 to ‘upgrade’. The new DRM-free tracks are also twice the quality (128kbps to 256kbps) and there’s no restrictions on how many computers or devices the music tracks are put onto.

Steve Jobs says he’s going to extend this offer to all the music labels that list their music in the iTunes Music Store, he said that he hopes to have half of the iTunes Music Store song using this new format by the end of the year. He mentioned that the DRM-free songs will be available in May.

BoingBoing says, “Nicoli cited internal EMI tests in which higher-quality, DRM-free songs outsold its lower-quality, copy-protected counterparts 10 to 1. “

That’s quite important, and it just goes to show how much people would prefer to have DRM-free music. It allows for much more flexibility. Since Apple is doing this people can use iTunes Music Store & iTunes for it’s ease of use and awesome functionality and they don’t have to be tied to using an iPod to listen to their music.

Extra Resources:
Apple Press Release
BoingBoing
Digg
TUAW
Engadget