If there’s one feature that I really appreciate about the App Store, it’s the ability to re-download previous purchases with ease.
Even if you’re on another device, all you need is your iTunes login credentials and bam; it’s downloading again, for free.
The iTunes music store doesn’t exactly work like that. I rarely download music from iTunes, so I was shocked the first time that I realized I couldn’t re-download an album that I had bought previously.
Fortunately, for those of you that rely on iTunes for all of your music needs, this might be about to change…
In order to give paying customers easier access to the music that they’ve purchased, Apple is reportedly in negotiations with the major record labels. Those labels include Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group Corp. (WMG) and EMI Group Ltd.
This is extremely good news for iTunes users, as it essentially guarantees a permanent backup of all of your purchased music.
While the negotiations are private, they are evidently in an accelerated state, because it is being reported that a deal could be finalized by mid-year.
I think this has been a long time coming and would make me reconsider buying music on iTunes again instead of Amazon. What do you think?
[Bloomberg via Apple Insider]