Great news out of the music world this week – Apple and EMI have partnered to begin offering DRM-Free music downloads on the iTunes music store.

The anti-DRM group Defective by Design challenged Steve Jobs to put his words into action when he wrote his now famous open letter, “Thoughts on Music,” denouncing DRM earlier this year, and gave him until April to make good on his desires, and he did; EMI is planning to offer their entire music catalog on iTunes in both DRM’d and DRM-free formats. The DRM-free formats will still be AACs, just unprotected so they can be convered into any format and played on any media player. Additionally, the AACs will be higher quality as well, at 256kbps. The new DRM-Free tracks will also be a touch more expensive, downloadable at $1.29 per track as opposed to their $.99 counterparts with copy-protection, but something tells me that that won’t stand in anyone’s way – the DRM-Free downloads will likely flourish now that they’re available, and the higher quality means they can be recompressed or converted without the audiophiles whining about degraded quality.

Jobs also pointed out that he expects other major labels to follow suit in the near future and open up their content as well, and offer DRM-free downloads with iTunes as well. Whether this really is the end of the DRM era remains to be seen, but given the things we’ve seen, from Sony’s rootkit DRM to lawsuits from EU member states, we can only hope it is.

[ Apple :: Apple Unveils Higher Quality DRM-Free Music on the iTunes Store ]

[ EMI : EMI Music Launches DRM-free Superior Sound Quality Downloads Across its Entire Digital Repertoire ]

[ David Pogue/NY Times: Music To Our Ears from EMI ]