Apple, Inc. announced today that their extremely popular iTunes Music Store will begin offering Digital Rights Managment (DRM) free music from EMI in May.

The groundbreaking deal sets the stage for Apple to once again show why their the leader in the world of downloadable online music.

For years many users have argued that purchased music should be allowed to be used across many platforms and portable players and Apple and EMI have now agreed.

In an announcement today Apple, Inc. CEO Steve Jobs said Apple’s iTunes Music Store will begin offering songs from EMI in higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song. In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song. iTunes will continue to offer its entire catalog, currently over five million songs, in the same versions as today—128 kbps AAC encoding with DRM—at the same price of 99 cents per song, alongside DRM-free higher quality versions when available.

“We are going to give iTunes customers a choice—the current versions of our songs for the same 99 cent price, or new DRM-free versions of the same songs with even higher audio quality and the security of interoperability for just 30 cents more,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think our customers are going to love this, and we expect to offer more than half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the end of this year.”

“EMI and iTunes are once again teaming up to move the digital music industry forward by giving music fans higher quality audio that is virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings, with no usage restrictions on the music they love from their favorite artists,” said Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group.

The iTunes Store features the world’s largest catalog with over five million songs, 350 television shows and over 400 movies. The iTunes Store has sold over two billion songs, 50 million TV shows and over 1.3 million movies, making it the world’s most popular online music, TV and movie store.

So what does this mean for the rest of the music, tv and movie industry? It means their going to need to get on board or be passed up. With the increasing growth of all forms of downloadable media the day of the cd is almost gone and it won’t be too long before it’s the same fate for the dvd too. That includes HD DVD’s and Blue Ray discs too.

In an open letter on the Apple website to the music industry last month titled Thoughts on Music, Steve Jobs argued that cd’s which currently represent 90% of the music market are all DRM-Free and so why limit music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free? Steve goes on to say, “What benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.”

Steve finishes his letter by saying, “Much of the concern over DRM systems has arisen in European countries. Perhaps those unhappy with the current situation should redirect their energies towards persuading the music companies to sell their music DRM-free. For Europeans, two and a half of the big four music companies are located right in their backyard. The largest, Universal, is 100% owned by Vivendi, a French company. EMI is a British company, and Sony BMG is 50% owned by Bertelsmann, a German company. Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace. Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly.”

With EMI the world’s third largest recording company now on board with Apple, how long will it be before the rest of the music, tv and movie industry jumps on board? Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.