EMI to offer DRM free music with Apple

EMI will offer DRM free music via iTunes starting in early May.

"DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just 99 pence per song. In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 20 pence a song."

”We are going to give iTunes customers a choice — the current versions of our songs for the same 79 pence price, or new DRM-free versions of the same songs with even higher audio quality and the security of interoperability for just 20 pence more”, said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think our customers are going to love this, and we expect to offer more than half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the end of this year”.

This is great news, as it enables customers to use the downloaded tracks on other music players, other than the iPod.