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Not only that but they innovated the idea before Apple ever did !!

would they have do so even if Apple didn't convince EMI to drop DRM?

I think not.

So there are a few directions this could take, here's the ones i can think of:
1) They unlock certain songs, and shortly thereafter, claim these songs are now more-heavily pirated, and use it for justification to sell more DRM to recording agencies
2) Same as #1, except they claim the songs are not selling better, and declare that DRM isn't an obstruction
3) they still include some kind of DRM but call it something else
4) They've actually seen the light, and are now going to try to innovate instead of regulate.
Did I miss any?
P.S. I don't have a lot of confidence in 4).

It probably goes without saying, but this isn't some initiative on MS' part. It's riding Jobs' coattails, crying "me too!, me too!", as if MS is some kind of crusader for consumers' rights around music and DRM.

Interesting how MS plays this as "opening up" things for the consumer. We'll see. I wonder how much progress MS has really made unencumbering consumers' music.

• have they opened up the wireless sharing at all (ahem, "squirting")
• have the at least allowed for non-drm music to be shared indefinitely?

I don't hold my breath waiting for MS to do anything for me. I cringe they are jumping on this as a potential PR windfall for them and their Zune. Fortunately, the Zune was pretty much issued DOA, and this doesn't make a whit of difference.

If I'm not mistaken, Bill Gates has paraded around in recent times saying that "customers want [DRM]"? It's ok to say you're wrong, Bill.

Of course they're aware that that's what consumers want. I think it's also pretty obvious that they don't like it, though, because it goes against their traditional strategy of vendor lockin.

'We've been saying for a while that we are aware that consumers want to have unprotected content.'

Since when? As far as I know, what they are trying is to provide the ultimate protection to content, from the file format [microsoft.com] to the media player software [microsoft.com] to the output hardware [microsoft.com].

...are done rejoicing, can we appropriately tag this article as irrelevant and slownewsday?

I went from buying about 10 CDs/month a few years ago to about 0 CDs/month because of RIAA tactics, the fact that buying spinning metal media discs is silly these days, and that the price was ridiculous. So I've got about 650 of those things in a closet, about the same bumber I had five years ago.

If I can buy uncrippled, high quality media files, I will. ~256K VBR mp3 is about the lowest I'll consider. Yes, I can hear the difference, consistently. Apple's 256K AAC should meet this spec, though I haven't listened to much AAC.

Now, it's time to optimize the price. I'm aware that the actual costs of distribution over the net is very low, and I don't care about marketing costs, because virtually nothing I listen to is marketed at all. I don't like being ripped off. $1/song is still a ripoff, but for uncrippled content I'll probably buy a few albums I've been wanting, just to encourage them.

But. At $.50/song and $5.00/album, I'd buy 100 albums today. I've got a five year backlog to catch up on. Probably be good for another 10/month, too.

Come on, music labels. Talk to your artists, see who's willing to experiment with the prices. Healthy industries with real competition experiment with prices to find the most profitable price points. You're pricing like a monopoly, but you're forgetting that we do have alternatives: Free legal music, free illegal music, boycott, video, games, books, etc. I suspect you'd make a lot more money if you weren't so greedy, scared, contemptuous and contemptible. Why not find out?

I think that this is just more evidence that Apple's success with iTunes with respect to market share really put the record companies over a barrel. They've wanted to raise the price of tracks from 99 cents for a long time now, but apparently didn't have the leverage over Apple to make them do it. Without higher per track prices on iTunes, there was no way they could get it at any competitors, who were already at a huge disadvantage anyway.

So when Jobs started talking about removing DRM, probably not just a coincidence, it set the stage for EMI to offer DRM free tracks, but at a higher price per track. It looks as if stripping DRM was the price of raising the price per track. Perhaps the record companies are realizing that removing DRM is the only way in the near term of loosening Apple's grip on the digital music market. Of course it is interesting to note that the DRM-less tracks from iTunes will be in AAC format which, while other players can support it, will tend to keep most people in the iPod fold since converting to other formats like MP3 is a hassle most consumers would prefer not to be bothered with. So I would look for growth in the number of AAC supporting players.

Every time someone does something cool, Microsoft always has to chime in. It's like the annoying little brother who is always following you around; whenever you say anything, he always says "Me too!" and then goes on to explain how what he did is even better. For anyone who didn't have a younger sibling growing up, it's hard to overstate the annoyance factor.

Netscape revolutionizes the Web -- MS creates free Internet Explorer. OSX introduces Expose, the Dock, and Widgets -- four years later Vista "innovates" with duplicate features. Apple rakes in millions with the iPod -- Microsoft creates poo-colored, squirting Zune. Google goes IPO -- MS announces "all-new, improved, better-than-ever" MSN search. Apple announces DRM-free music -- you guessed it: Me too! Me too! Me too!

I don't hate Microsoft (though sometimes it seems like they work awfully hard to make people hate them) but I'm not buying their "We want to eliminate DRM too" PR either. Microsoft's media file format, software, hardware player, and store are all strong arguments that that's a load of monkey excrement.

One interesting way this could play out is taking the Zune's wireless sharing abilities from a sort of novelty "That's kinda neat" feature to something actually marketable (not to mention a legal quagmire for Microsoft). They sell unprotected music, with 0 DRM, and then people start sharing songs between Zunes like crazy. I had a Zune for a while, and loved it, it's actually a great little device. If MS would make a few tweaks to it's usability and features, it would really be a great product. It's already better than an iPod (imho) of what it can do, usability, and features. The real question, however, is if Microsoft is just changing to adapt to what is really becoming a truly consumer driven market, or if they're actually trying to go after Apple's complete dominance of the MP3 device market. Either way, should make for an interesting show.

I can't help but wonder when the first RIAA lawsuit is brought forth against Apple or MS for "Enabling Filesharing" by "Failing to protect copyrighted content". And then going after the HDD manufacturers for making access to the files so easy.

Give us lossless FLAK or WAVs and I'm sold. Enough of this lossy compression crap.