A major breakthough: You can now buy some songs from the iTunes store that don’t have copy protection. The tracks are in the section called “iTunes Plus,” which is launching with songs from the EMI Group. The DRM-free songs cost a little more – $1.29 instead of the usual 99 cents. But they are encoded at a higher quality and are compatible with non-iPod music players. Plenty of impressive acts here, too: Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, Erasure, Joss Stone, Norah Jones, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and lots of acts I probably would know if I were hip. (The download requires a software upgrade to iTunes 7.2.) Why so huge? A few reasons. Apple benefits from selling songs to the non-iPod crowd, obviously. But also, it was running into trouble with European regulators who saw its DRM as a monopoly on downloadable music. EMI is just the first label – but this is clearly the direction in which Apple wants others to go.
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