To contact the MediaGuardian newsdesk email or phone 020 7239 9857.The standard iTunes deal gives the music company a small share of the sale from each track, but EMI's new deal with Apple is believed to be on a licence-free basis.įinancial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but other music companies are expected to follow suit.Īpple also launched a service on the iTunes store today that makes university lectures, language lessons and lab demonstrations available to students for free.Ĭontent is provided through a partnership with US colleges including MIT, Stanford University and the University of California Berkeley. ITunes Plus tracks without digital rights management software, or DRM, can be played on almost any device and copied to multiple devices across PCs and Macs.ĮMI's decision to offer rights-free music heralds a change in tactics for the music industry, which is struggling to tackle the problem of online music piracy. The iTunes catalogue now contains 5m songs, 350 TV shows and 500 films. 'We expect more than half of the songs on iTunes will be offered in iTunes Plus by the end of the year,' he added. The Apple chief executive, Steve Jobs, said iTunes users are 'very excited about the freedom and sound quality' of the new service. Users can also upgrade their existing iTunes library to iTunes Plus quality for 20p per track.

ITunes Plus tracks will be higher quality than standard iTunes songs and will retail for 99p each, compared to 79p per track for lower-quality recordings.

Drm free songs