While EMI may be eliminating DRM, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has appears to be moving in the opposite direction, announcing its list of its top 25 schools for pirating movies….

Apple today announced that EMI Music’s entire digital catalog of music will be available for purchase DRM-free (without digital rights management) from the iTunes Store worldwide starting in May. DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for $1.29 per song.

In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song. iTunes will continue to offer its entire catalog, currently over five million songs, in the same versions as today—128 kbps AAC encoding with DRM—at the same price of 99 cents per song, alongside DRM-free higher quality versions when available.

“We are going to give iTunes customers a choice—the current versions of our songs for the same 99 cent price, or new DRM-free versions of the same songs with even higher audio quality and the security of interoperability for just 30 cents more,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think our customers are going to love this, and we expect to offer more than half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the end of this year.”

EMI Music, in a joint event with Apple, announced today that it is launching new premium downloads for retail on a global basis, making all of its digital repertoire available at a much higher sound quality than existing downloads and free of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.

Here are the slides from the announcement….

EMI Music, in a joint event with Apple, announced today that it is launching new premium downloads for retail on a global basis, making all of its digital repertoire available at a much higher sound quality than existing downloads and free of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.

The new higher quality DRM-free music will complement EMI’s existing range of standard DRM-protected downloads already available. From today, EMI’s retailers will be offered downloads of tracks and albums in the DRM-free audio format of their choice in a variety of bit rates up to CD quality. EMI is releasing the premium downloads in response to consumer demand for high fidelity digital music for use on home music systems, mobile phones and digital music players. EMI’s new DRM-free products will enable full interoperability of digital music across all devices and platforms.

Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group, said, “Our goal is to give consumers the best possible digital music experience. By providing DRM-free downloads, we aim to address the lack of interoperability which is frustrating for many music fans. We believe that offering consumers the opportunity to buy higher quality tracks and listen to them on the device or platform of their choice will boost sales of digital music.

“Apple have been a true pioneer in digital music, and we are delighted that they share our vision of an interoperable market that provides consumers with greater choice, quality, convenience and value for money.”

In February, Steve Jobs challenged the music industry to give up DRM.

“Selling digital music DRM-free is the right step forward for the music industry,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “EMI has been a great partner for iTunes and is once again leading the industry as the first major music company to offer its entire digital catalogue DRM-free.”

EMI has announced (above) a special event with Apple to be held today in London. EMI Chief Executive Eric Nicoli will be joined by Apple Chief Executive and co-founder Steve Jobs to make a joint announcement.

Whlie some are speculating that they will announce that the Beatles’s music will be available for the first time as digital downloads, the Wall Street Journal is saying that EMI will be making a portion of its music catalog available as downloads without DRM:

In a major break with the music industry’s longstanding antipiracy strategy, EMI Group PLC is set to announce today that it plans to sell significant amounts of its catalog without anticopying software, according to people familiar with the matter.

The London music company is to make its announcement at a London news conference featuring Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs. EMI is to sell songs without the software — known as digital rights management — through Apple’s iTunes Store and possibly through other online outlets.

In February, Apple and The Beatles ended their long feud over the use of the name “Apple” in relationship to music. Under the agreement, Apple Inc. (computers) owns all of the trademarks related to ‚ÄúApple‚Äù and licenses certain of those trademarks back to Apple Corps (The Beatles) for their continued use.

The Zune portable media player, Microsoft’s iPod-killer, will be getting advanced podcasting support, according to exclusive information that we have received today.

Microsoft hasn’t made an official announcement yet, but we’ve managed to obtain previously unreleased images that show the Zune’s podcast support in action.

While we may have criticized Microsoft in the past for the Zune’s lack of podcasting support, Microsoft now appears to be leapfrogging Apple.

Not only is Microsoft introducing a new, radically enhanced podcast format, but it also is introducing sexy new social networking features, code-named embrace and extend.

Here are the exclusive details…

Popular tech-startup-fetish site TechCrunch announced today that it has agreed to acquire the assets of FuckedCompany, a website that features stories on dot com company failures. Assets to be transferred in the transaction include the domain name fuckedcompany.com, all content on the site and other assets related to its business.

The combined company should be able to dramatically streamline its operations, since most of the sites covered in TechCrunch quickly show up in Fucked Company’s coverage of failed companies.

“We’re thrilled to be part of the TechCrunch team,” said Philip Kaplan, the founder and original editor of FuckedCompany. “We see this as the natural transition for our company as TechCrunch follows what is happening in the world of technology and start ups and Fucked Company tracks what happens when they fail. The combined company will be able to grow and stay relevant no matter what the current economic forecast.”

“I’m excited to be working with FuckedCompany, a website that helped define the extravagance of Web 1.0, and which serves as a constant reminder to entrepreneurs and venture capitalists that the market moves in cycles,” said Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch. “As the Web 2.0 movement cycles down, we can now focus on covering those startups that clearly aren’t going to make it to a liquidity event.”

Google today announced the launch of Google TiSP, a free in-home wireless broadband service that delivers online connectivity via users’ plumbing systems.

The Toilet Internet Service Provider (TiSP) project is a self-installed, ad-supported online service that will be offered entirely free to any consumer with a WiFi-capable PC and a toilet connected to a local municipal sewage system.

“We’ve got that whole organizing-the-world’s-information thing more or less under control,” said Google Co-founder and President Larry Page, a longtime supporter of so-called “dark porcelain” research and development. “What’s interesting, though, is how many different modalities there are for actually getting that information to you – not to mention from you.”

March 30: It’s 31 Days of Free Music month at Podcasting News. Every day in March, we‚Äôre highlighting a great free music podcast.

This month, we’ve tried to showcase some of the best music podcasts. Podcasts like Accidental Hash, Rubyfruit Radio and KEXP’s Music That Matters. We’ve also tried to show the variety of podcasts that people are doing. Podcasts like the pulse-pounding DJ mixes of Podrunner; Jon Hammond’s video podcast of live jazz jams; and the Stop-Rokkasho podcast – a podcast that promotes awareness of the dangers of nuclear energy.

There are a lot more great free music podcasts than we can cover in one month. With that in mind, here are five great music podcasts to check out:

• The Superfibre podcast features the best DJ mixes from around the world. Preview an episode below, or subscribe by adding this URL to your podcast software:
  http://feeds.feedburner.com/superfibre
• It doesn’t matter if your local radio station doesn’t have a blues show – you can get great blues whenever you want from the Murphy’s Saloon podcast. When he’s not commenting on the stories at Podcasting News, Murphy’s scouring the Internet for the best blues music to share. He also puts together fantastic show notes, so you can see exactly who every artist is and where you can find them on the Web. Preview Murphy’s Saloon below, or subscribe with this URL:
  http://www.murphyssaloon.com/rss
• We can’t let the month go by without a shout out to Insomnia Radio. Insomnia Radio is more than a podcast, it’s a family of dedicated music freaks working together to make crappy mainstream radio a thing of the past. There’s Insomnia Radio Chicago, Insomnia Radio New York, Insomnia Radio UK – and they’ve got more dedicated music freaks lined up to make new shows. There’s a whole Insomnia Radio family. Preview the original Insomnia Radio Guide with its Guide to Rocking, below, or subscribe using this feed URL:
  http://feeds.feedburner.com/insomniaradio
• Electronic Groove is another great electronica podcast. It features house music from around the world – studio mixes, live mixes and podcast interviews. Preview an episode, below, or subscribe using this feed URL:
  http://feeds.feedburner.com/EGPodcast
• Finally, The Switched is a video podcasts that offers free music videos that you can download and play on your Apple TV, you iPod or your computer. It’s like MTV without all the crap! It’s still very new, but we’re hoping that there will a lot more shows to come, and more great free video podcasts. You can preview The Switched below, or subscribe with this feed URL:
  http://feeds.feedburner.com/theswitched

March 29: It’s 31 Days of Free Music month at Podcasting News. Every day in March, we’re highlighting a great free music podcast.

One of the things that is great about music podcasts is that they let you explore whole categories of music that mainstream radio tends to ignore.

A great example of this is Rubyfruit Radio, a podcast that is all girls, all the time. The podcast features the best in female indie artists, artists like 7-Year Bitch, Dar Williams, Mieka Pauley (right) and Samantha Murphy.

Most of the artists featured on Rubyfruit Radio are musicians that you probably haven’t heard of because they don’t fit into strict mold of mainstream radio. Over the last 100+ episodes of her show, show host Heather Smith has featured hundreds of indie female singer-songwriters and helped bring them to a broader audience.

You can find out what you’ve been missing by previewing a recent episode, below, or by subscribing to Rubyfruit Podcast by adding this feed URL to your podcast software:
http://rubyfruit.libsyn.com/rss

Image: Chris McKay