Hot on the heels of Apple’s Steve Jobs asking the music labels to drop DRM requirements for selling their digital downloads, London-based EMI (the third-largest record company) has whole-heartedly started investigating making the music on its labels available for download in the MP3 format.
The story comes from the Wall Street Journal, but got picked up by the Associated Press this morning, so it’s not exactly breaking news, but nonetheless very important. The fact that EMI is holding talks with several online retailers is a huge step forward, meaning that some day, I might not have to download an album, burn it to a CD and rip it back as MP3s in order to listen to it on any device I want.
Music free of copy protection is one of the big reasons I subscribe to eMusic.com. Not because I want to be able to make pirated albums of the music I purchase or give the songs away to friends and family, but because I paid for them and I shouldn’t be punished for it.