Nokia music to become DRM-free

Jan Vermeulen

Jan Vermeulen is a technology journalist and web developer at MyBroadband. After receiving a Computer Engineering degree at the University of Pretoria he worked at...

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Nokia has announced that it will be rebranding the Nokia Music Store as “Ovi Music” from 9 September 2010. According to Nokia this coincides with the arrival of the new Ovi Music platform in South Africa.

Among the new features announced for the “Ovi Music platform” are:

1. Enhanced music search and discovery
2. Optimised artist pages
3. Music recommendations from local Ovi Music editors
4. DRM-free MP3 track purchases from the Ovi Music a-la-carte service

The DRM-free track purchases will allow music fans to share music with friends and use tracks as ringtones, according to Nokia.

Nokia also announced that their unlimited music download service, Comes With Music, will be known locally as “Ovi Music Unlimited.” It will offer new and existing users features such as track suggestions based on what other users are downloading, said Nokia. It will also include music specials like B-sides, remixes and compilation cuts.

While Ovi Music Unlimited allows users to download an unlimited number of songs within a specific period, tracks downloaded from the service will not be DRM free.

DRM-free Nokia music << Was DRM a barrier to using the service before?