To the record industry, the importance of the EMI/iTunes deal is about raising prices on singles. The industry believes that singles are replacing albums, and that it has to find a way to make a living on a release without being able to sell an album's worth of tracks.

Notice that prices on single songs went up by 1/3, but prices on full albums -- even with higher-fidelity DRM-free files -- didn't go up a single penny.