larryni.me.uk

The Guardian’s Technology blog wrote yesterday that EMI and Apple were to make a big announcement today. But with yesterday being April Fool’s day they were obviously a bit cautious. Now they have a follow-up, it looks like it might be the beginning of the end for DRM at iTMS! The only source so far seems to be the Wall Street Journal and unfortunately the article is for paying subscribers only. Here’s an extract of the WSJ article The Guardian has published:

In a major break with the music industry’s longstanding antipiracy strategy, EMI Group PLC is set to announce today that it plans to sell significant amounts of its catalog without anticopying software, according to people familiar with the matter.

The London music company is to make its announcement at a London news conference featuring Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs. EMI is to sell songs without the software — known as digital rights management — through Apple’s iTunes Store and possibly through other online outlets.

UPDATE: Reuters have confirmed the announcement:

LONDON, April 2 (Reuters) – EMI Group Plc said on Monday it was making its music catalogue available through Apple Inc’s iTunes store without the anti-piracy measure known as digital rights management (DRM).

“The new higher quality DRM-free music will complement EMI’s existing range of standard DRM-protected downloads already available,” EMI said in a statement as the company began a joint press conference in central London with Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs.

UPDATE 2: More on TechCrunch:

EMI will offer all songs from its digital catalog without DRM. iTunes is first partner. Songs will be encoded at 256k and sold at $1.29 per song, $0.30 more per song than the current price. These will be offered along side the existing lower quality, DRM tracks, and consumers can choose.

Entire album purchases will stay at the same price, but have the higher audio quality and will be DRM free.

EMI music videos will be available DRM free with no change in price.

Customers who purchased tracks previously can upgrade to DRM free tracks for $0.30 per track.

Jobs says they are trying to do similar deals with other labels, and expects that 50% of all of their tracks sold will be DRM free by end of year.

From the official press release:

Apple’s iTunes Store (www.itunes.com) is the first online music store to receive EMI’s new premium downloads. Apple has announced that iTunes will make individual AAC format tracks available from EMI artists at twice the sound quality of existing downloads, with their DRM removed, at a price of $1.29/€1.29/£0.99. iTunes will continue to offer consumers the ability to pay $0.99/€0.99/£0.79 for standard sound quality tracks with DRM still applied. Complete albums from EMI Music artists purchased on the iTunes Store will automatically be sold at the higher sound quality and DRM-free, with no change in the price. Consumers who have already purchased standard tracks or albums with DRM will be able to upgrade their digital music for $0.30/€0.30/£0.20 per track. All EMI music videos will also be available on the iTunes Store DRM-free with no change in price.

EMI is introducing a new wholesale price for premium single track downloads, while maintaining the existing wholesale price for complete albums. EMI expects that consumers will be able to purchase higher quality DRM-free downloads from a variety of digital music stores within the coming weeks, with each retailer choosing whether to sell downloads in AAC, WMA, MP3 or other unprotected formats of their choice. Music fans will be able to purchase higher quality DRM-free digital music for personal use, and listen to it on a wide range of digital music players and music-enabled phones.

This really is great news, hopefully the rest of the labels are going to follow suit. Why the lower quality tracks are going to be sold with DRM applied is a bit odd though. I guess EMI isn’t prepared to let go of it just yet.