Apple Reported To Be In Talks For Allowing Free Downloads Of Previously Purchased Music Content
March 7, 2011
According to some sources via Bloomberg, Apple is in talks with the major music companies to bring iTunes content a bit closer to the App Store. The agreement would offer a bit of a safety net concerning music content purchases, where users are currently fully responsible for backing up purchased songs and albums to prevent a need to re-purchase if lost or deleted.
On Friday, Bloomberg posted an article that "three people with knowledge of the plans" are reporting that Apple is intending to bring the ability to re-download music purchases for free, and the feature is targeted to be announced as early as this summer. Vivendi Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Music Group are amongst those mentioned that Apple is attempting to persuade.
To veteran App Store customers, this may seem like lackluster news. Apple has always allowed customers to re-download apps after deleting them. Of course, there isn't a great system yet to easily identify those without tirelessly sifting through your purchase history. This has never been the case for song and album purchases. The music label holders have been strongly against any action that has the slightest possibility of piracy, forcing slow adoption of things like DRM removal.
If these negotiations succeed, it will allow customers to re-download previously purchased music on authorized devices without needing to re-sync, fetch a copy from a backup, or pay for the content again. For computers, this may not be a huge concern as Apple only allows five of them per iTunes account. However, Apple allows an unlimited number of iDevices to be registered to an account, which has the only restriction of needing to be synced with a single iTunes library.
I don't think this will quite be as convenient or nearly as much of a backup solution as the App Store. All iOS apps need to come from the App Store -- jailbreaks aside. On the contrary, your music library may be from many different sources. A person can import from compact discs, purchase from other online digital music retailers, and even create their own tunes. The re-download option is certainly a welcome, but regular backups are still highly preferred or even necessary unless every piece of music would be from the iTunes Store.
It's also possible these talks could have been the source of speculation about a subscription service or iTunes 'cloud' system. The re-download implementation would seem more likely, and even that is probably very difficult for Apple to convince music companies of allowing. Not only that, this re-download policy isn't even active yet and could still be a ways off.
I'll certainly be giving a thumbs up to this move if it comes true, especially since it's another win for consumers, although I'm much more anxious for the Purchases section from the Mac App Store to trickle into the App Store and iTunes Store. If you have your own thoughts on the subject, we'd like to hear about them in the comments section.