Digital Top Stories

Comes With Music launches in China without DRM

By | Published on Thursday 8 April 2010

Nokia today launches its terrible all-you-can-eat download service in China, though the Chinese version looks set to be a whole lot less terrible because the music users download will come without digital rights management embedded.

As previously reported, Comes With Music in all other territories gives users unlimited access to what are theoretically ‘permanent’ downloads, but said downloads are locked to the device they are downloaded to, so access to music downloaded via the service only lasts for the lifetime of a phone or PC, so a couple of years max.

But downloads frm Comes With Music China will have no DRM, which presumably means tracks can be transferred from one device to another. It’s not clear whether that means the music will be provided in the popular MP3 format – very possibly not, which will still be a limitation. Though presumably it will be easier to convert CWM files into a more versatile file-format without the DRM limitations being in place.

Obviously, Comes With Music uses limiting DRM in other territories because that is the only way it can get labels to sign up to an all-you-can-eat service. Many record companies remain nervous about services which give users unlimited access to truly permanent downloads for a set monthly or annual subscription, as Virgin Media know very well. However, it seems likely that in China, where the vast majority of current downloads are illegal, labels are much more open to such business models.

Music Ally quote Universal’s Rob Wells as saying: “China is a massive opportunity and a challenging market to address”, while Sony Music’s Thomas Hesse says the DRM-free Comes With Music proposition provides a “great potential to convert China’s massive audience of music fans into consumers of legitimate digital music”.

Comes With Music China will be available via a plethora of Nokia phones, and won’t be tied to any one mobile operator. Consumers who already own one of the CWM compliant handsets will also be able to sign up for the service. I’m not entirely sure how the Chinese version of CWM will be billed, in other territories the subscription fee is bundled in with the cost of the handset.



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