Apple have announced that the extensive EMI catalogue will be available to buy via iTunes from May and will not include the usual DRM locks that stop users from copying the material to other machines or MP3 player. The veteran label – whose roster includes Coldplay, Lily Allen, Norah Jones, Robbie Williams, Pink Floyd, Kraftwerk, Kate Bush, Blur, The Beach Boys and many other major artists – said today (2 April) that their music will also be available at a higher quality than the usual offerings online. DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just 99 pence per song. Normal encoding is at 128kbps.

In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 20 pence a song. iTunes will continue to offer its entire catalogue, currently over five million songs, in the same versions as today —128 kbps AAC encoding with DRM — at the same price of 79 pence per song, alongside DRM-free higher quality versions when available.

"We are going to give iTunes customers a choice – the current versions of our songs for the same 79 pence price, or new DRM-free versions of the same songs with even higher audio quality and the security of interoperability for just 20 pence more," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. "We think our customers are going to love this, and we expect to offer more than half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the end of this year."

The announcement follows Jobs’ plea to the music industry in February that DRM should be scrapped, allowing consumers to buy music from any store that could be played on any music player. “This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat."

"We have to trust our consumers,” EMI’s chairman Eric Nicoli told the BBC earlier today, when asked about the possibility of piracy. "We have always argued that the best way to combat illegal traffic is to make legal content available at decent value and convenient."

The announcement was made amid much speculation that Jobs would also declare that The Beatles’ back catalogue would finally be available on iTunes, following the recent legal settlement between Apple the Mac and iPod people and the Fab Four’s own Apple Corps company.