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March 3, 2009

Nokia Comes with Music to go DRM-free

Phone maker considers removing restictions

Carrie-Ann Skinner

Nokia has revealed it may consider following in the footsteps of Apple by removing digital right management (DRM) from the music available through its Comes with Music service.

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Nokia Comes with Music - which is currently only available on a handful of mobile phones, including Nokia's XpressMusic 5310 handset - allows users to download as many songs as they want from the Nokia Music Store for 12 months after they have purchased a compatible Nokia handset. Nokia says that users can then keep the music after the year is up.

The Nokia Music Store features tracks from four major record labels. However, the DRM prevents the tracks from being transferred to another digital music player or from being burnt to CD.

A handful of Nokia phones feature the Comes with Music service

Nokia Comes with Music review

Adam Mirabella, director of Global Digital Music Retail at Nokia, told Channel News Asia:"We have dialogues going with all of our partners and DRM-free is also on the roadmap for the future integration of Comes With Music.

Channel News Asia also spoke to Sandy Monteiro from Universal Music, who said: "We always knew digital was the answer, but for all this time, we've never been able to figure out a model that actually makes money, given the fact that music is so available on the net or so freely available that people were getting the music they wanted, but not actually paying for it".

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Apple announced at the start of the year it would be offering music tracks in its iTunes store that were DRM-free.

See also: Price of Nokia 'Comes with Music' phone slashed

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Comments received


Matthew said on Tuesday, 03 March 2009

Carrie-Ann, you've got a mis-quote in youe piece. The comment about "We've always known digital was the answer..." was actually made by Sandy Monteiro of Universal, check the channelnewsasia item again :-)

Carrie-Ann said on Wednesday, 04 March 2009

Well spotted Matthew. We've now attributed the quote to Sandy.

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