With this new iPod “Touch,” which is an iPhone without a phone, surely it is clear that Apple will eventually get out of the download business altogether and will be selling music-by-subscription or by-the-listen.
At a stroke, they would be out of the download/DRM game; you wouldn’t need as much storage on the device, and all of your music would be secure “in the cloud.”
If the price is right for listen-on-demand, no one in their right mind would continue downloading, for the obvious reason that the backup requirements are onerous, and it’s a pain to remove the DRM for those who need or want to do so.
Once the iPod Shuffle has wi-fi . . . watch out!
