iTunes goes partially DRM free

At a press conference in London today, EMI along with Steve Jobs announced the availability of DRM free tracks via iTunes. Macrumors has a good roundup of the news. The gist is that for an extra $0.30 per song, or for the same price per album, you’ll get 256kbps AAC files without any DRM restrictions. At this point it’s just EMI, and perhaps not even the full EMI catalog, but Apple is predicting 2.5 million DRM free tracks by the end of 2007, indicating that they expect other labels to join in the fun.

Is this one of those “tip of the iceberg” moments, where DRM finally crumbles, or will this just prove that people can’t be trusted with DRM-free music? Time will tell.

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