Apple today made music available on its market-leading iTunes online store without the controversial digital rights management (DRM) technology designed to safeguard tracks from piracy for the first time.

The iTunes Plus service will offer DRM-free music of a higher quality than standard iTunes tracks for 99p a song – compared with 79p for a standard track.

Users who opt to pay extra for iTunes Plus tracks will be able to play the music without limitations on the type of music player or number of computers that purchased songs can be played on.

The service is launching with EMI’s digital catalogue of outstanding recordings, including singles and albums from Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Frank Sinatra, Joss Stone, Pink Floyd and John Coltrane.

Steve Jobs, the Apple chief executive, said: “We expect more than half of the songs on iTunes will be offered in iTunes Plus versions by the end of this year.”

Eric Nicoli, the EMI chief executive said “This is a tremendous milestone for digital music … Consumers are going to love listening to higher quality iTunes Plus tracks from their favourite EMI artists with no usage restrictions.”

Standard iTunes tracks can only be played on up to five computers and are password protected.

DRM has been a controversial issue in the music industry. Record companies have insisted that the software is necessary to prevent illegal copying, but Apple’s service has been criticised by several European regulators for being anti-competitive, prompting Mr Jobs to say in February that he would get rid of Apple’s system “in a heartbeat” if the labels agreed.

Edgar Bronfman, the chief executive of Warner Music, later said that Mr Jobs’s argument was “completely without logic or merit”.

Privately, however, labels have been exploring the possibility of dropping DRM, which is thought to be partly responsible for the disappointing uptake of online music sales.

Online music sales still account for only 10 per cent of the total market and are not yet growing at a rate which compensates for the decline in revenues from CDs – approximately 2 to 3 per cent per year.

EMI, which has previously released tracks by Norah Jones and Lily Allen without copyright protection, shelved plans to drop DRM on a more widespread basis after iTunes competitors refused to make “risk insurance” payments designed to offset potential losses that would result from the move. It is unclear whether Apple has made any such payment.

Other labels, including Universal Music and Song BMG, have experimented with offering music without DRM, but none has pursued the strategy as aggressively as EMI.

The iTunes Store has sold over 2.5 billion songs, 50 million TV shows and over two million movies, making it the leader in each of those markets.

Apple also announced the launch of iTunes U, an area within the iTunes Store carrying free content such as course lectures, language lessons, lab demonstrations, sports highlights and campus tours provided by top US colleges and universities including Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Duke University and MIT.

Stanford Provost John Etchemendy said: “Our partnership with Apple and iTunes U provides a creative and innovative way to engage millions of people with our teaching, learning and research and share the experience of intellectual exploration and discovery that defines our university.”

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