Nokia Comes With Music not that free afterall

Dec 5 2007, 2:02am CST | by Luigi Lugmayr

Yesterday Nokia announced the Comes with Music program, where you get a year of free music from a catalog of millions of tracks with the purchase of a device. You can keep the downloaded music after that free subscription expires.

Arstechnica took a closer look and discovered some DRM related restriction to this awesome sounding deal. The key to the discovery is that Nokia partnered with Universal Music, which announced an Apple iTunes Rival just a couple of weeks ago.
Universal Music charges carriers or manufacturers a subscription fee of $5 per month so they can offer free music to customers.
Nokia is the first to join this program. Which would be fine by itself, but Nokia is apparently using Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM to prevent you from burning the downloaded tracks to CDs or converting them for use on other music players. You would have to purchase un upgrade for each track.
To renew your subscription you are supposed to buy a new Nokia phone.
More details on Arstechnica.

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Luigi Lugmayr
Luigi is the founding chief Editor of I4U News and brings over 15 years experience in the technology field to the ever evolving and exciting world of gadgets. He started I4U News back in 2000 and evolved it into vibrant technology magazine.
Luigi can be contacted directly at ml@i4u.com. Luigi posts regularly on LuigiMe.com about his experience running I4U.