A couple of months ago, Steve Jobs posted a great piece about the state of digital music sales, in which he proposed the abolition of DRM as consumer-friendly move, and mentioned that Apple would "embrace it in a heartbeat."

About two months later, EMI has made its entire catalog available without DRM restrictions, and Apple has followed through by making all these tracks available on the iTunes Music Store, alongside regular DRM-protected ones. Sure, each unprotected song costs 30 cents more, but you also end up with a higher quality file - the new tracks use 256 kbps AAC encoding compared to the 128 kbps encoding that DRM-protected iTMS tracks use.

Props to EMI for being the first big label to offer a catalog full of DRM-free music. Apple also deserves kudos for taking this step in the right direction; actions speak louder than words, after all. Today's event marks a big win for consumers. Let's hope more labels follow suit soon.