Come With Music - a game changer

[slitchfield]

Ewan's had a couple of weeks to mull over the upcoming 'Comes With Music' initiative from Nokia and he reckons that it really is an industry game changer. Just be glad Steve Jobs hadn't announced a similar scheme for iPods and that the Internet didn't go into meltdown....

Read on in the full article.

"Joining Nokia in this endeavor is Universal Music Group, the largest of the four major record labels which, between them, control of the order of 75% of music sales in the world."
What does this mean? Does it mean that only UMG is onboard. What % of the market do they have? Even if 'the four major record labels' join is 75% enough?
What will the music market be like in a few years anyway? Prince gave his latest album away for free in the uk (but made his money from his sell out concerts) and Madonna has signed her latest recording contract with her concert promoter not her record label. Many artists will follow this model of free albums but making money from the concerts and merchandising.

But with this model the end user still pays for this music when they buy the handset.
I wonder who actually benefits from this? UMG and co or Joe public...?

[Ratkat]

And how many networks will be happy to allow music to be given away free with the handsets?

Currently for example Vodafone have both the Vodafone Musicstation and Nokia Music store on the N95 8GB and N81, but other networks such as Orange won't stock phones with the Nokia Music Store on-board.

'Comes with music' basically wipes out the networks revenue from music unless they are to be offered a share.

So like VOIP/SIP I would imagine that some of the networks would remove the 'Comes with music' function or just not stock the device.
As most handsets certainly in the UK are network branded it will limit the amount of devices able to access the service.

[ares]

So, are people sure Sony BMG will enter on this, knowing that Sony Ericsson also has plans for its music store/business???

[Rafe]

I'd be fairly confident that all the labels will come on board, there are no guarantees of course.

This sort of thing will become a lot more common and working with a big partner like Nokia make sense.

I actually think operators may go for this - after all its going to have a great marketing angle and operators could always do an intelligent data bundle (e.g. plus free donwloads on your phone via HSDPA for £5 flat rate data). Operators aren't making money from music, but encouraging data usage can only be good for them.