An Apple a day will soon push the DRM hassles away

It looks like Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) is using its power for good. Now that it's partnering with major music companies in the digital music arena, it's hoped that customers will soon be able to listen to their music without all the nasty Digital Rights Management (DRM) problems that limits their digital music choices.

The music industry has been deathly afraid of the transition from CDs and other physical media to digital formats (MP3, for example), and so it locked up files in a protective "wrapper" that prevented customers from trading digital music files for free like candy outside a candy store. The only problem with that was that the universe of digital music players ended up with different formats, incompatibility issues, extreme customer frustration and the actual limiting of music sales for many companies based on how heavily they all treated customers as criminals.

That day may be ending, and to a good part, we have Apple CEO Steve Jobs to thank for this. Although Jobs was not even close to being the first to publicly state the need for getting rid of digital protection in order for the music industry to expand, his voice was probably the most powerful. As such, the EMI Group will soon sell its digital music filed on Apple's iTunes music store with better sound quality and no digital rights management restrictions. Strike one up for pleasing the customer, not the stingy and protective record labels. Apple just can't seem to do wrong these days, and I think its shares reflect that, yes?