Yesterday EMI announced the ground-breaking decision to release it’s entire music catalog DRM-free. And at a greatly improved sound quality to boot. Apple’s iTunes will be the first distributer of the new files starting in May. iTunes will be selling the new and improved tracks as a premium at 30 cents extra per song. Going from $.99 to $1.29. While no one ever likes a price increase, I’d happily pay the extra 30 cents for the superior sound quality and freedom to play the song on whichever device I wish. Two really nice features are that album purchases will remain the same price as the current DRM versions. And you will also be able to upgrade your currently purchased tracks to the new DRM-free higher quality super-hotness for 30 cents. Which brings up two questions I haven’t seen asked.

1. If you previously purchased an album, will you still need to pay 30 cents per track to upgrade that album since the album prices aren’t rising for the new format?
2. If you acquired tracks through iTunes free weekly downloads, will you need to pay the 30 cents to upgrade those? (I understand we got them for free in the first place, but it’s still worth asking.)

Regardless though, this is a tremendous advancement in digital music downloads and I’ll certainly be purchasing more music online because of it. At least from EMI artists.

More info on this can be found from EMI and Apple.