Steve Jobs’ open letter, published in February, to push the music industry to DRM-free music, makes a first impact: Today, EMI Music in London announced, that they will offer premium downloads without DRM (digital rights management) and with better encoding quality within the iTunes store. Single premium downloads (256 kbps encoded ACC without digital right management) will cost $1.29/€1.29/£0.99. Purchased songs can be upgraded for $0.30/€0.30/£0.20 per track. Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group and Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs presented the new concept in London, today.
It’s interesting, that the price for complete albums will not be changed for the premium version. The music industry tries to season their complete albums.
Basically, this is a real improvement on the consumer side. Until now, all "early adopters" have been punished with all these DRM-restrictions. And on the other side: the good old CD, without copy protection, with printed cover, with better quality and with an "integrated backup feature" ;-). Let’s not talk about the hacker attacks from Sony’s "copy-protection" root kits. It would be a real step forward, if the honest customers, who buy their music legally, will not be punished for that.

Sources: apple.com, wikipedia.org, source & picture: emigroup.com