ITunes customers will soon be able to buy songs by the Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Coldplay and other top-selling artists for $1.29, or 30 cents more than the copy-protected version. The premium tunes also will be offered in a higher quality than the 99-cent tracks.

EMI Chief Executive Eric Nicoli said The Beatles music catalog is excluded from the deal, but said the company was "working on it." He declined to set a time frame for negotiations over the catalog.

The announcement followed calls by Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs earlier this year for the world's four major record companies, including EMI Group PLC, to start selling songs online without copy-protection software.

The technology, known as digital rights management, or DRM, is designed to combat piracy by preventing unauthorized copying or sharing, but it also can be a consumer headache. Some music players, for instance, support one type of DRM software but not others.

Jobs said that he planned to offer around half of all music in the iTunes store under the premium package by the end of the year, but declined to say whether the company was in discussions with other leading record companies.

"Consumers tell us overwhelmingly that they would be prepared to pay a higher price for digital music that they could use on any player," Nicoli said. "It is key to unlocking and energizing the digital music business."

The iTunes music store will begin offering EMI's entire catalog—apart from The Beatles—without DRM software starting next month, he said.

The situation was exacerbated by a long-running trademark dispute between Apple Inc. and Apple Corps. That legal feud was resolved in February when the two companies agreed on joint use of the apple logo and name, a deal many saw as paving the way for an agreement for online access to the Fab Four's songs.