EMI Without DRM?

EMI says it's going to begin selling music over iTunes without annoying Digital Rights Management features on the files. Good for them. Tim Lee says if this happens "they'll have earned at least one new customer" but you can count me as a second. I don't understand why more labels don't do this. The main beneficiary of the iTunes DRM is neither the artist nor the label, but rather Apple Computer.

If you own a like of iTunes DRMed files, then you're always going to want to use an iPod as your MP3 player because only an iPod will play your files. And then, having invested in an iPod, you're only going to want to buy music from iTunes since only iTunes will play files that run on your iPod. The result, over time, would simply be to make Apple a more important music industry player than are any of the record labels. EMusic, which offers DRM-free downloads, is really a much better long-run strategy for the record labels even though so far only indie labels have been smart enough to figure it out.