As the resident Apple fanboy, I feel it necessary to tell you anything Apple-related that sparks my fancy. Don’t worry, I’m not going to whine to you about how much Windows sucks, that’s for another post. Today, I’m going to tell you about EMI’s joint announcement with Apple today. By May, EMI will sells it’s entire catalog of songs DRM-free on iTunes for $1.29 each.

If you’re not quite sure what DRM means, DRM is the copy protection on your music that pretty much prohibits you from using your music as you want to. Example: iTunes songs can only be played on iPods.

That extra $0.30 doesn’t only buy you a DRM-free song. You also get a 256kbps AAC track; that’s twice the quality of normal iTunes-bought tracks. If you’re fine with your DRMd music, you can still get the usual $0.99 songs with DRM and at the lower bitrate. While you pay a premium on single tracks, all EMI albums will be sold at their normal price at the higher bitrate and will be DRM-free. Another nice thing is that EMI’s videos will stay at their current price and will also be, you guessed it, DRM-free.

Anyone thinking about how screwed over they currently are, as in the person who owns every EMI song, you’re not that screwed. Apple will let you “upgrade” your library to the higher quality, unhindered version for $0.30/track. For Apple, that’s pretty nice.

One side note, EMI’s most notable artist (most likely), the Beatles, are not included in this deal. Hopefully that’ll come in the future.

Look for this on iTunes in May.

Apple Press Release