The Members Forum

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.

ZDnet has the details HERE!