EMI Music launches DRM-free superior sound quality downloads across its entire digital repertoire allowing Apple’s iTunes store to be the first online music store to sell EMI’s new downloads.

EMI Group CEO Eric Nicoli today hosted a press conference at EMI’s headquarters in London where he made the announcement. Nicoli was joined by Apple CEO Steve Jobs who recently posted an open letter against DRM for music downloads. The event also featured a musical performance by The Good, The Bad & The Queen.

Could this be the beginning of the end for copy protected tracks that some consumers see as crippling? I may depend on the outcome of this experiment by EMI.

According to the EMI press release, the new higher quality DRM-free music will complement EMI’s existing range of standard DRM-protected downloads already available. From today, EMI’s retailers will be offered downloads of tracks and albums in the DRM-free audio format of their choice in a variety of bit rates up to CD quality. EMI is releasing the premium downloads in response to consumer demand for high fidelity digital music for use on home music systems, mobile phones and digital music players. EMI’s new DRM-free products will enable full interoperability of digital music across all devices and platforms.

Apple’s iTunes Store will 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.

“Selling digital music DRM-free is the right step forward for the music industry,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “EMI has been a great partner for iTunes and is once again leading the industry as the first major music company to offer its entire digital catalogue DRM-free.”

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.

EMI Music will continue to employ DRM as appropriate to enable innovative digital models such as subscription services (where users pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to music), super-distribution (allowing fans to share music with their friends) and time-limited downloads (such as those offered by ad-supported services).

Update: After initially selling the premium DRM-free music through the Apple iTunes Store worldwide in May, EMI plans to expand the program to other music outlets. Retailers partnering with EMI, which also plans to remove DRM from its video downloads, will be able to choose from a variety of levels of sound quality. They will also be able to choose between selling files in the MP3, WMA and AAC formats. In iTunes, music will be sold in a 256 kilobit-per-second AAC format, the company said.

Higher-quality music files, which will play on any computer and any digital-audio player, will not replace the copy-protected EMI music currently sold through iTunes. Rather, they will complement the standard 99 cent iTunes downloads and will be sold at a premium: $1.29 per song allowing customers to “upgrade” their prior purchased tracks at 30 cents per track. Albums will be DRM free, though they won’t charge a premium (hence, most will cost $9.99) and all of EMI’s music videos will drop the DRM but remain priced at $1.99.

Music from the Beatles has been released by EMI since 1962 and is currently unavailable for legal digital download anywhere on the Internet. When a reporter asked Jobs whether a Beatles deal with EMI was upcoming, Job replied, “I want to know that, too.” Nicoli stressed that “we’re working on it.” So no Beatle announcement at this time.

Jobs said on live interview on CNBC, there has never been a “firm lock” on music sold through iTunes Store since you can burn iTunes Store songs to CD and strip off the DRM anyway. What this new DRM-free music offering provides says Jobs is a hassle-free, higher-quality option.

“We are going to give iTunes customers a choice—the current versions of our songs for the same 99 cent price, or new DRM-free versions of the same songs with even higher audio quality and the security of interoperability for just 30 cents more,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in the press release. “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.”

Jobs said that iTunes would let users know if there is a song available at the higher-quality encoding automatically, so people don’t need to think about it on an individual song basis.

EMI is just the first, according to Jobs. He said Apple expects well over half of the songs on the iTunes Store to be DRM-free by the end of the calendar year.

“EMI has taken the first bold step in the music industry and starting today Apple will reach out to all the other major and independent labels to give them the same opportunity,” said Jobs.

With DRM-free music from the EMI catalog, iTunes customers will have the ability to download tracks from their favorite EMI artists without any usage restrictions that limit the types of devices or number of computers that purchased songs can be played on. DRM-free songs purchased from the iTunes Store will be encoded in AAC at 256 kbps, twice the current bit rate of 128 kbps, and will play on all iPods, Mac or Windows computers, Apple TVs and soon iPhones, as well as many other digital music players.

The iTunes Store features the world’s largest catalog with over five million songs, 350 television shows and over 400 movies. The iTunes Store has sold over two billion songs, 50 million TV shows and over 1.3 million movies, making it the world’s most popular online music, TV and movie store.

My opinion: Other labels may soon follow EMI’s lead as it will be impossible not to also offer DRM-free downloads. iTunes Store’s new track price will $1.29 going forward, but for better quality and no copy protection. I doubt the 99-cent DRM-laden, low quality tracks will remain for sale on iTunes Store for as long.

This is a vast change in direction for EMI. At one time EMI was planning on deploying Macrovision on their CDs that did not even allow ripping them to iTunes. See: EMI irks Apple over iPod anti-rip CD compatibility claim. Thank god this idea never took off.

This is NOT the day the music died, BUT it might be the day that “DRM music” died!

Let’s go to the video tape: CNBC has posted video of Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, and Eric Nicoli, EMI Group CEO, discussing their partnership on DRM-free, high-quality music downloads. Watch it here.

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