EMI and Apple announce 256k DRM-free music

In today’s Big News™, EMI announced that it will make high-quality, DRM-free music available in the iTunes Store.

From MacNN:

The Cupertino-based company will make individual AAC format tracks available from EMI artists at twice the sound quality of existing downloads and without any digital right management (DRM technology). Pricing will be $1.29/€1.29/£0.99; however, 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. The new higher-quality, DRM-free songs will be available in May.

I haven’t bought much music from the iTunes Store lately because in my opinion tracks encoded at 128k sound awful. The fact that EMI/Apple are keeping the per-album cost of the higher-fidelity, DRM-free music the same as the lower-quality DRM version, means they probably just got a customer back.

As for people who buy single tracks here and there, will they be motivated to buy a higher-priced version of the same song to get higher-fidelity without DRM? I don’t think so. They’ll likely be happy buying the cheaper, standard-quality DRM version.

So, on the one hand Apple can offer listeners like me higher quality, DRM-free music without a price hike (for full albums), while on the other hand, they can continue to offer the single track buyer songs at the same 99¢ (which the major labels have been pressuring Apple to raise for some time).

All ’round, probably a smart move for Apple.

Knowing that other major labels and indies are likely to follow suit, what are you thinking today if you manage the Zune Store?

UPDATE: Post and comments from Michael Geist