Some pretty big news out of China recently as Nokia has announced the launch of its Comes With Music service in the world’s second largest consumer market. To be known locally as Yue Sui Xiang and included for free with the purchase of select Nokia handsets (in China’s case, the X6 16GB, X6 32GB, 5230, 5330, 5800w, 6700s, E52 and E72i), the service allows for the downloading of an unlimited amount of à la carte tracks over a period of 12 to 24 months. Even better, all of the music — which includes catalogs from Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, EMI Music, Huayi Brothers Media Group, Taihe Rye and more — is DRM-free and allows subscription holders to keep everything they’ve downloaded after their subscription runs out. Hats off to Nokia for giving a pretty censored country a little bit of freedom. Now… When is the this DRM free business coming to the democratic world? We’re pretty tired of stripping away the DRM ourselves.
