I guess you can buy DRM free music right now and have been able to for ages – just buy a CD and rip it. That is what I do, and I have the bonus that the CD is the back-up!
Anyway EMI have decided that from May they will release their music without crappy DRM on it, via iTunes. Good news? Yes and no.
Yes, finally a big company has finally realised that people don’t want or like DRM anything. It won’t mean lost sales as people that pirate/copy music will still do that, won’t they? This looks like the start of the end of DRM, yippee!
No, well EMI have taken the DRM off but increased the price 30% – now it works out to be way more expensive than just buying the CD. You do get better quality that the DRM version but still nothing like what a CD can offer.
Look, I guess, I just don’t understand the reasoning why people would pay for downloadable music in the first place but if people want to, well, DRM free is the way to go. Strangely the same music will be still able to be bought with DRM as well!
Whether this DRM free music will be available in my country is another thing – we only recently had the itunes store available and still don’t have Movies and TV like the US iTunes.
I notice that Apple has never, ever mentioned about DRM free movies and TV only music.
goldcoaster 
I can think of one good reason to download a song rather than buy the whole CD. That would be the one song on the whole album that’s worth a listen. For example, I was always a big KISS fan from the time I bought Alive 2, way back when. From the ’80s on, though (when they took off their makeup), they put out albums with 8-11 songs on them but only 1 or 2 were worth the listen. Buying the whole album made me feel like I just got ripped off. If I could have downloaded one or two songs, I would have had what I wanted and spent less. That’s even more the case today, as now we have all kinds of tripe out there with one songs peppered between here and there.
I guess so, McCorey. I still like getting the albums as it usually seems that I start to like some other song as well as the singles.