In a bold move, EMI and Apple are making music by some EMI artists — including Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones and Coldplay — available on the iTunes music store free of DRM (Digital Rights Management) controls and at a higher quality of audio encoding (256kbps, AAC).

While this looks and sounds like a move in the right direction, there is a cost increase of 102% 30% over the normal iTunes per-song charge.

Update: I mistakenly applied the DRM-free video price as the DRM-free music price — hence the earlier miscalculation of a 102% increase in price.  The correct increase is 30%.  I have corrected the body and title of this post.   Thanks, Marc, for catching that.

Last week I blogged about Steve Jobs calling for an end Digital Rights Management (Steve Jobs takes on DRM).  Add Yahoo! and music giant EMI to the list.

A USA Today article (EMI in talks to dump copy protection) reports that David Goldberg, General Manager for Yahoo Music, believes online music sales would increase by 15% to 20% without DRM.  The article quotes Goldberg as saying “The labels understand that DRM has to go.  It’s nothing but a tax on digital consumers.”

The article also reports that EMI is in discussions with online music stores to sell its catalog free of DRM protections, and has already done so with music by Norah Jones.

Vote with your money.

Steve Jobs has published an essay — Thoughts on Music — in which he calls for an end to Digital Rights Management (DRM).

Mr. Jobs makes several very important statements in his essay. One explains that, theoretically, music buyers are locked into the supplier/technology through which they make their purchase…

Apple, Microsoft and Sony all compete with proprietary systems. Music purchased from Microsoft’s Zune store will only play on Zune players; music purchased from Sony’s Connect store will only play on Sony’s players; and music purchased from Apple’s iTunes store will only play on iPods.

The essay then explains some of the reasons why DRM is not working and suggests some alternatives. The alternative that is given the most attention is an end to DRM.  The treatment begins with…

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

Stay tuned.