Apple ends music restrictions
We welcome the news this week that Apple has agreed to start selling digital songs from its iTunes store without copy protection software. At present, most music downloaded from Apple’s iTunes store can only be played through an iTunes interface or iPod.
In our predictions for 2009, we said that “Online music retailers will follow Amazon and Napster’s lead and meet consumer preference for DRM free music.” In addition, we said “Mobile phones will become the dominant platform for listening to music, boosted by their portability, the high storage capability of the latest phones and the ability to play the ubiquitous MP3 format – DRM free of course!”
So what next? Well, we predict that Apple will allow downloads of music to iPhone from other sites but we may have to wait until 2010 for that!