Today, EMI and Apple announced the availability of the entire 5 Million song EMI catalog on iTunes DRM Free. This is the first major step towards a DRM free music Universe.

This undoubtedly was affected by Steve Jobs’ open letter to the 4 Major RIAA partners, and is an extremely important development in the world of music sharing and the ability to discover new music through the network of your friends.

This step will hail a new wave of iTunes consumers because people like me want to have copies of music they can freely move around without the worry of DRM getting in the way. This has been the main reason that I have not purchased anything (except for Mine Again for BRTC) from the iTunes Music Store.

The message is simple: Trust your consumers, and they’ll be more likely to buy your product.

Edit (2007-04-02 22:10 pdt): The one thing I did forget to mention is that this will be treated as a premium service, with iTunes offering higher bitrate tracks (256kbps it would seem) without DRM for $.30 (US) more per track. Money well spent if you ask me.