Today’s piece in the FT, which has predictably been picked up by pretty much every major news outlet, is a classic ‘we’ve got bugger all to say, but we’ll run with it anyway’ story.

You can tell this by the fact that there’s not a single quote from anyone in the story and the fact that the closest it has to a named source is ‘executives familiar with the negotiations’. In other words, the cleaner who happened to be listening at the door when someone floated the idea.

The FT doesn’t even say whether the executives are employed by Apple, the music companies, the analysts it refers to, or some other third party which has a vague interest.

Nevertheless, if there’s even a shred of truth in the story it raises some interesting questions. So lets assume for a moment that it is true.

Here’s the guts of it:

‘One executive said the research had shown that consumers would pay a premium of up to $100 for unlimited access to music for the lifetime of the device, or a monthly fee of $7-$8 for a subscription model.’

Would you pay £50 for an iPod if it meant you could download as much music as you want from iTunes at no extra cost? On the face of it, of course you would, so would I. Which is why the market research apparently returned such positive results. But there’s an important phrase in the story which could be crucial — ‘for the lifetime of the device.’

That means that when your iPod dies, so does the music. It also means that, presumably, you won’t be able to sync those tracks with a Mac or PC or burn them to CD. And, of course, it means the return of that nasty ogre we thought was slowly shuffling out of the room, DRM. In order to ensure that tracks or only available for the ‘lifetime of the device’ Apple will have to ensure that they can only be played on that device, which means DRM.

Now, would you pay an extra £50 in order to be able to download as many tracks as you want, over Wifi, directly to your iPhone or iPod touch if you could only listen to them on that device and with the knowledge that the music is locked to that iPhone/iPod? Suddenly it’s not so clear cut.

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