Orange's Music Store Also DRM-Free

It seems that the trend towards transforming the music stores from mobile phone makers and carriers around the world into DRM-free portals is attracting even more companies on its side, with the latest one to adopt it being Orange. Copy locks appear to be on their way to becoming an endangered species, and Orange Music Store's is getting ready to remove DRM on its two million tracks, as the latest news on the web points out.

The turn-around will affect both the PC download and mobile download areas, and, whereas 700,000 tracks already turned to the DRM-free mode, it seems that the rest will gradually have the same fate. As many of you might already know, a wide range of other companies also announced plans to make the switch, and one of them is expected to be Nokia, with its Nokia Music Store and Comes With Music services.

As for Orange, the company released the Music Store back in 2005, with tracks coming from major labels, but from smaller ones as well, though it seems that it hasn't made many improvements to the portal since then, and it lacks the discovery features that similar services offer these days. Even if it makes the move towards the new copy-protection standard, the store will have a lot of things to catch up in case the carrier plans on lining it up with other solutions on the market.

One proof of the music sales not going well is the fact that Orange’s music head Richard Wheeler joined Virgin Media's troops back in April this year. “If we don’t remove the DRM, we believe it will be slow growth. Ideally, we will have MP3. The majors are changing,” Orange’s content SVP Herve Payan stated a while ago, mocoNews reports. For what it's worth, the operator is taking the first steps towards improving its music service, and the future will show whether it has made the right choice, so stay tuned to learn more details on this.