Just about everybody has an opinion on EMI's drop of DRM from its digital downloads. Here's a compilation of analysts' quotes and a few of my thoughts.

Jupiter's David Card sees little short-term impact and a greater long-term impact: "Will DRM-free distribution jump-start digital music sales? (Especially enough to deflect the impact of dying CDs.) Unlikely. At least not in and of itself. It should enable more competition among stores and devices, which, in the longer run, will."

Card is right. EMI alone cannot cause much of a change in digital sales. Consumers will react when they have a reasonable expectation of what product and price awaits them. Since iTunes is mostly a "pull" retailer, customers will have to stumble across EMI's DRM-free tracks artist by artist, release by release. (I imagine that serious jazz fans know which titles are owned by EMI, but mainstream pop fans? No way.) When consumers know that all tracks are DRM-free, their behavior will begin to change (which could mean an increase in purchases or the purchase of a different music player).

Dropping DRM was good news for the digital kiosk industry, which to date has been hampered by interoperability. There's a great deal of potential there -- but only when all songs are DRM-free. Partially DRM-free catalogs could be a source of confusion and frustration.

In writing about the DRM drop's effect on iPod competitors, Jupiter's Michael Gartenberg did not make a prediction but explained the implications of either outcome: "For other vendors in the hardware space, it will eventually remove the issue of iTunes lock in but if their sales don't take off, it will be clear that it wasn't lock in to the iPod economy that prevented their success."

Gartner's Mike McGwire had two points (read article here). First, Apple will get more money for basically the same product. Second, DRM's future lies in subscription-based models, or as he put it "less as a lock and more as a tracking mechanism." I think that's fair to say. All-you-can-eat subscription models require DRM.

Said NPD Group's Ross Rubin (in this SF Chronicle article), "Most consumers just care if it works with their music player today. But in the long term, it'll benefit consumers because we'll see more devices able to work with digital music."

Bridgewell analyst Patrick Yau did not go out on a limb. "EMI has said that it is aiming for 25 percent of its revenues to come from digital sales by 2010, and we suspect that this will provide a boost to those aims," he said. Sure. Unless labels do something to shore up CD sales, that 25% by 2010 would be a done deal without ditching DRM.