This article is more than 13 years old

This article is more than 13 years old

In a major change of policy for a record label, EMI announced today that it will begin selling songs without copy protection through Apple's iTunes music store.

The announcement was made at an event in London this lunchtime attended by Apple's chief executive, Steve Jobs, and Eric Nicoli, his counterpart at EMI.

They announced that from May EMI's entire music and video catalogue will be available without the anti-piracy technology that currently restricts how people can copy and listen to their digital music tracks.

"It's clear to us that interoperability is important to music buyers and is a key to unlocking and energizing the digital business," said Mr Nicoli.

Mr Jobs explained said the songs will cost 99p, compared with the 79p charged for DRM-protected versions. They will be encoded at 256kbps, making them better quality instead of 128kbps used for the standard songs.

In February Mr Jobs called on the music labels to stop using this technology, called Digital Rights Management (DRM), saying that he wanted iTunes to only sell DRM-free music.

EMI is the first label to heed Mr Jobs's call.

DRM is controversial because it restricts how a song that has been legally purchased can be played. For example, a track bought on iTunes and encoded with Apple's FairPlay DRM will work on an iPod but not on rival digital music players.

News of EMI's press conference sparked speculation that music by the Beatles may finally be available online. Unlike almost all other major acts, the Beatles have so far declined to offer their songs for sale on the web. However, this position does not appear to have changed.