Apple launched DRM free music on iTunes

It finally happened. Apple launched iTunes Plus, a new service that will offer songs free of DRM protection, although at a higher rate and with a higher quality level of 256 kbps AAC music. A song will sell for $1.29 vs 99 cents for the DRM protected songs. These songs are currently restricted to only songs provided by EMI under the EMI-Apple deal. Apple is also letting people upgrade their previously purchased DRMed songs to DRM free for 30 cents per song.
Consumers have not been very appreciative of DRM. While it prevents piracy, it also restricts the choices available to users; for example, consumers cannot play these songs on a player other than iPod, which is considered an unfair restriction. Refer this article:

Today Apple launched iTunes Plus, a premium service that offers music tracks free of copy protection. The iTunes Plus service debuts, as expected, featuring EMI Group's digital catalog of recordings.
Apple says the copy protection-free music tracks will be available as high quality 256 kbps AAC encoded audio "virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings" and will sell for just $1.29 per song. That's 30 cents more than tracks with copy protection that sell on iTunes for 99 cents. The technology that is used to prevent music tracks from being copied and redistributed is called digital rights management or DRM.
Apple will continue to offer EMI's music with the DRM technology and at its current audio quality, for customers who don't want to pay extra.
Most notably, Apple's proprietary DRM system prevents people who buy songs from its market-leading iTunes store from playing them easily on any music player other than an Apple iPod. That restriction has attracted criticism, particularly from regulators in Europe who say it unfairly limits customer choice.

This is actually a pretty good deal for Apple. They get to be considered as responsive to customer needs, and at the same time, are able to up the price of songs that they sell. Surely, there's good money to be made in seeming to be responsive to consumer needs. There will be a number of other players, both in the online music category and the music albums other than EMI who will be waiting to see the user response to this campaign. If sales jump, so will they.