Possibly seeing the continued drop in CD sales and the staying-power of online music piracy despite the best efforts of the RIAA, EMI has started leading the way in new tactics to engage customers – a non-hostile way – and I think it’s great.

First, was the team-up with Apple to release DRM-Free digital music. The deal (officially launched yesterday) has gotten such good buzz since it was announced that Steve Jobs said yesterday at the D Conference that he expects half of all the music on iTunes to be DRM-Free by the end of the year! Clearly other labels are very close to joining up – this is something that was unthinkable a year ago, but EMI broke rank, stepped up to the plate with Apple, and the rest will go down in history.

Then today EMI announced a deal with YouTube (Google) that will legally allow for not only their artists’ music videos to appear on YouTube, but also – and in my book, much cooler – YouTube users to use EMI artists’ songs and clips in their own videos.

It seems like EMI is the first to realize that people using their music in videos is not worthy of a lawsuit. How many people are really making a lot of money off of these homemade videos? Sure, some do in various ways but I’ve got to think that it’s more beneficial to both the record company and the artist as a means of free publicity then it would be spend millions of dollars in legal fees to sue for what would basically be nothing in return.

Most people use music in their videos because they are fans, not because they are trying to steal. I don’t know how seemingly no one figured this out before EMI today.

Kudos to EMI for taking the initiative and giving something to the people who make their industry turn – the fans – other than a cease and desist order.