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Apple discussing unlimited downloads of purchased songs from iTunes

By | March 4, 2011, 8:38am PST

Summary: Apple is reportedly negotiating with several major record labels to ease restrictions on downloads of purchased music from iTunes.

Apple is reportedly negotiating with several major record labels to ease restrictions on downloads of purchased music from iTunes.

“Three people with knowledge of the plans” have confided in Bloomberg saying that the discussions are revolving around unlimited downloads to iPhone, iPod and iPad devices “linked to the same iTunes account.” Furthermore, iTunes customers will be treated to a permanent backup of purchases stored in a cloud when a hard drive crashes or that terrible day when a laptop or iPhone might be stolen.

A few of the music industry giants involved in the talks include Vivendi Universal, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music and EMI. Finalized plans could be revealed by the middle of this year.

This is certainly welcome news if it pans out. Currently, it’s easiest to just buy music on a computer with iTunes installed, and then just sync all of one’s portable gadgets to the same computer to make sure each device has all the right music. But if you have an iPhone and an iPad and you decide to buy music on one of those devices, then it’s a pain to get music from one to the other.

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Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.

Disclosure

Rachel King

Rachel King has no business relationships, affiliations, investments, or other potential conflicts of interest relating to the content posted in this blog.

Biography

Rachel King

Rachel King is a staff writer for CBS Interactive in San Francisco. Before serving as a contributing editor at ZDNet in New York City for two years, she previously worked for The Business Insider, FastCompany.com, CNN's San Francisco bureau and the U.S. Department of State. Rachel has also written for MainStreet.com, Irish America Magazine and the New York Daily News, among others. Rachel has a B.A. in Mass Communications and History from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University, where she served as art director for the student magazine, Plated.

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RE: Apple discussing unlimited downloads of purchased songs from iTunes
bradavon 5th Mar 2011
"But if you have an iPhone and an iPad and you decide to buy music on one of those devices, then it?s a pain to get music from one to the other."

I thought it appeared in your iTunes account and then sycned across to any device that uses the same account, no?
>>Furthermore, iTunes customers will be treated to a permanent backup of purchases stored in a cloud when a hard drive crashes or that terrible day when a laptop or iPhone might be stolen.

I love it and totally welcome this.
0 Votes
+ -
Back up your files people!
dmclean@... 4th Mar 2011
Never mind the fact that everyone who owns a computer should have an off-site back-up plan and NOT doing so is a really, really, really bad idea. In fact, there are no words for just how bad of an idea that is.
@dmclean@...
Having cloud as additional back is not bad at all. I take regular back ups with my Time Machine on MacBook and windows 7 back cup on my Dell.
@dmclean@...

Relying on any ONE method is generally a bad idea. I just had that happen today when I found out a song I bought from Napster had been lost and I had to re-buy it (I could have called for a download reset, but I had plenty of credits and it was worth the convenience anyway). That was a PEBKAC error, and my backups of my music reflected that error. Cloud storage doesn't protect you indefinitely, since Napster *did* let me re-download tracks when they were WMAs...but no longer.

Cloud is unreliable and local backups are unreliable, but it is unlikely that both will fail at the same time.

Joey
@dmclean@... It is generally considered prudent to back up to three different endpoints, not including the original copy. I have online backup, flash drive back up x2. I think I'm covered, thanks. grin
0 Votes
+ -
Much ado about nothing!
Tony in TLoTRS 4th Mar 2011
"But if you have an iPhone and an iPad and you decide to buy music on one of those devices, then it?s a pain to get music from one to the other."

How so? Anything I've downloaded from the iTunes Store directly to my iPhone has automatically synced with the mother ship as soon as it's docked!
It even appears in its own little "Purchased on my iPhone" category under the Store.
"But if you have an iPhone and an iPad and you decide to buy music on one of those devices, then it?s a pain to get music from one to the other."

I thought it appeared in your iTunes account and then sycned across to any device that uses the same account, no?

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