Comes with Music - devices with prepaid music credit

[slitchfield]

Nokia has announced 'Comes With Music', a revolutionary program that enables people to buy a Nokia device with a year of unlimited access to millions of tracks from a range of artists from Universal Music Group (more publishers to be added). For details, see the press release below.

Read on in the full article.

[Rafe]

Flickr pictures from keynotes here: http://flickr.com/photos/rafeblandford/

[andrewgalpin]

looks a great idea i think it will be very popular, especilly among young people

[blackgold]

And for those of us who use a phone as a business tool, does this mean we are subsidising children to use the music store? Or can we opt out of the "included" subscription? This seems to me a badly thought out plot by Nokia.

[ebo]

Do we even know if there's a general subsidy for all phones? It's possible the price Nokia pays for Universal is included in the device price.

For example, Nokia Nx standalone for 550 €, Nokia Nx Comes With Music for 750 €. This way the 'free' music would be paid by the customer.

Another great All About Nokia podcast!!! Congrats!

[Reda EK]

@Ebo
I don't know the details of this service but I really doubt Nokia will deliver on the market two phones, 1 with subsidy 1 without. The reason is simple, if you do that you tell the consumer about the cost of the service and tell your competitors how much you are paying labels... It's just my initial assumption and I might be completely wrong ;-)
I hope this concept really takes off even if it's not "attached" to a mobile phone purchase because I'd really love to consume and pay for music this way...

Nothing is free, it appears that the service will lock the tracks to the device, you will have to pay to actually free them from the device to download and burn a CD, they will be play for sure drm secured wma files. So although it sounds like a good deal its not quite the future of music yet....drm free tracks that you actually own that play on any device at a much reduced price compared with todays downloads (5.00 per album) is the way forward..

Each manufacturer is trying to lock users into its own system (apple-itunes, noka-comes with music, microsoft-zune store) which I object to...free the music!

Its ironic that people get excited over streaming music locked to devices etc.. but there is a little known platform that has been providing this service for years called the "radio"!

[Ewan]

@MVN

No the music is not locked to a device - you can download (and re-download) on a PC and copy over to any Windows Media device, including a number of S60 phones. And you can burn these to a CD as well. Having spoken to the Nokia Music team on this, I'm wondering where *you* got the info on the service :-)

I know a lot of techheads flag up DRM and think free to download open and free music is the nirivana. In a way it is, but this service is a big change in the landscape and is a good sign of how change will happen over the next few years.

Ewan,
Info from this source about restrictions, true or not I do not know but its up to Nokia to clarify all of these questions up front or web sites can say anything..

see paragraph 3, "In order to renew the subscription and regain access to new music for another year, Nokia says consumers can purchase a new device. Burning a CD of any track(s) will require an upgrade purchase for each track."

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post...ue-to-drm.html

The original Nokia Music store (Uk beta) had the ability to download to pc, side transfer to a limited range of devices or burn a CD, this is a "subscription" model linked to certain devices that appear to have some form of Universal Music "tax" added to the device/subscription price.

When I mentioned drm I did not refer to unrestricted (illegal) downloads, I currently use itunes as my main download source but do not want purchased restricted to certain devices, I want the ability to move the music I own to any device I own (ipod,car,pc,nokia phone etc..) in the same way a CD purchase would play on any cd player (car,house,portable,pc).

Agree that apple need some real competition but its unclear what the small print is for this service, something Nokia need to clarify.

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