Apple and music label EMI held a press conference this morning and have announced that there will be “premium” music tracks offered on iTunes free of DRM, as well as keeping their current selection online as well. What does this mean?

If you pay the 1.29 for the premium 256kbps AAC DRM-less tracks, you get better sound and aren’t locked into a certain player or iTunes, per se. A huge jump forward in the industry. The 30 cent price increase is simply a shrug of the shoulders in my opinion. And of course you can still get the lower quality (what we have today) with the DRM for the current .99 per song. Also of note is that all music videos from EMI will now be DRM free as well. What a day in history it is!

UPDATE: I don’t know how I missed it when reading the first press release, but it turns out that users will be able to pay a 30 cent upgrade fee to upgrade their previously purchased regular DRM tracks to the new premium ones. Didn’t see any information about limitations on this, but seems to coincide with the Complete My Album feature which debuted last week. Interesting….

MacRumors Coverage here.

Apple Press Release here.