One of the major complaints about the Nokia Music Store and the accompanying Comes With Music initiative is that it comes with DRM. DRM is added to digital files to restrict the number of places you can playback that file. For Comes With Music, users are allowed unlimited downloads for 12 or 18 months, provided they stick with the same phone and computer. There are some allowances for using the music on other computers, but the restrictions are frustrating.
DRM was designed to help prevent piracy, but all it really does is serve to frustrate and annoy legitimate users, most often driving them to piracy anyways. Apple’s iTunes Music Store recently made all of its tracks available as DRM-free files, and the Amazon music store does the same thing, allowing customers the freedom to listen to their music anywhere they wish. Fortunately, it seems that Nokia is poised to do the same, soon.
At the launch of the Nokia Music Store and Comes With Music in Singapore, recently, Adam Mirabella, director of global digital music retail at Nokia, reportedly stated, ‘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.’ That’s definitely cool to see.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, Nokia is far too late to the party, specifically in the U.S., where executives love to flippantly state ‘yeah, we’re focused on the U.S. market’ without really doing anything. The Nokia Music Store was announced over 2 years ago, and it still hasn’t launched in the United States. Thus far, the Nokia Music Store is only live in a few countries, and only a handful of phones are available as Comes With Music phones.
In any case, making the Nokia Music Store DRM-free would be a good first step to increasing the attractiveness, for sure.
