RSSNokia chooses to unveil music service with DRM
By Tim Conneally | Published December 5, 2007, 3:29 PM
During a recent press event, Nokia announced its "Comes With Music" service, which provides unlimited downloads for subscribers with Nokia music phones, but with DRM.
Nokia's "Comes With Music" will initially give users access to a large catalog of Universal Music recording artists, with more major labels to be added in the future, Nokia says. Subscriptions will be offered to customers upon purchase of a new Nokia device. A deal reported to take place in the second half of 2008 will even offer one year of the service for free.
Subscription download services like Napster present users with the dilemma of having a huge catalog of music at their fingertips, but only for as long as they wish to subscribe. Nokia's service addresses this issue by DRM'ing the downloads with Microsoft's PlaysForSure, so when the subscription expires, the tracks are still available.
While this cures the "shelf life" for subscription-based downloads, it opens a host of other problems associated with DRM.
For example, only about 165 types of portable devices support PlaysForSure, with the main body of support coming from Creative Labs, Samsung, and SanDisk. There is no support for iPod or Zune, and burning will cost the user an additional fee.
Nokia has taken two different methods of protecting music and employed them together, with a result that some might conclude to be less than desirable were it not for the one-year's free trial.
FairUse4WM = iPod music?
It's gotta be a bit of a drawback though when you're comparing the Nokia to something like the iPhone - people can already use their purchased iTunes DRM music on their new iPhone - but can't on their Nokia. And vice-versa - buy something for the iPhone and transfer it to your iPod, but not with the Nokia.
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|"I don't know why any company would implement a DRM technology that does not currently work with the Apple iPods."
DRM encoded files (not compatible with the number one portable player) won't get much of a market. This reminds me of the idiot, who insisted upon selling BetaMax recorders and blank cassettes, even after SONY stopped peddling their own creations.
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|Hey don't bash on the Bmax man. It was a great form of media that was much better than VHS. However it died because all the porn released was on VHS tapes. Besides DRM is NOTHING like Betamax anyway, you're comparing apples to steak here.
It wont matter anyway when TPM comes along.
TPM TPM TPM :(
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|I don't know why any company would implement a DRM technology that does not currently work with the Apple iPods.
A one-year service trial for free could create a bit of interest for people who have Creative Labs, Samsung and SanDisk products.
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