We earlier reported on tantalizing progress to remove customer-unfriendly and customer-avoiding DRM on digital music files. Not so quick. ... major label EMI floated the concept to larger retailers and asked an advance payment to compensate them for the risk. The retailers were quite interested. Apple CEO Steve Jobs has openly legislated against DRM. However, negotiations over the size of the payment ensued and now have broken down.

The initiative may also have hurt by Warner Music's offer to buy EMI. Warner CEO Edgar Bronfman strongly opposes offering open files that can easily be copied.

Given that CD sales continue to slide and digital sales are cooling off, it's likely that DRM-less files will only stimulate the market and increase, not decrease, revenues. But the labels aren't ready to take that leap yet.