In China, Comes with Music will be known as 'Yue Sui Xiang'. It is being launched in local partnership with Huadong Feitian, a mobile service company. By partnering with a local company, Nokia is able to call on local expertise to navigate the local music industry and regulatory framework.
The announcement of Comes with Music for China is especially notable for its DRM-free nature. This is important because digital music piracy in China is frequently described as 'rampant'; the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry has estimated that 99% of all music files currently distributed in China are pirated, although such numbers are only best-guess estimates. Given the dynamics of the music market in China, being DRM-free is an absolute necessity if the service is to have a chance of success. The major music labels may be more willing to take a risk in a market where they perceive they have 'less to lose'.
China represents a huge market opportunity in mobile. There are more than 710 million subscribers and this number is expected to grow to over 1 billion by 2014. It is the world's biggest mobile market. The launch of Comes with Music follows in the footsteps of Nokia's app store announcement with China Mobile late last month.
"This launch delivers a truly mass market music offering from China’s most loved mobile brand. Our broad range of Comes With Music enabled devices and the high quality, DRM-free catalogue form the perfect legal download recipe for the world’s biggest market for mobile phones,” says Liz Schimel, Global Head of Music, Nokia. “Globally, we have expanded the reach of our music service to 30 markets in just 18 months. We are excited to see consumers building collections of the music they love through our service, and we are firmly on the path to delivering legal digital music to all parts of the world. It’s fantastic to have so many local and global labels partner with us to deliver this service in China. The industry came together to support us in innovating the mobile music business model in this unique market."
The services includes the music catalogs of the world's four biggest record labels: Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and Emi Music. It also includes a number of local independent labels including Huayi Brothers Media Group and Taihe Rye. The local music labels will also have their content made available in other countries with a Nokia Music service.
"China is a massive opportunity and a challenging market to address. Nokia is the undisputed dominant mobile player within China – there is no better partner with whom to develop the market in new, imaginative ways and make the most of its potential," says Rob Wells, Senior Vice President, Digital, Universal Music Group International.
Song Ke, CEO, Taihe Rye, says; "We are very excited by the opportunity to have our music catalogue not only available in China, but to the rest of the world. Lovers of Chinese music can now download content from Comes With Music, broadening the market for our artists globally."
At launch, consumers can get Comes with Music with the purchase of any one of eight devices, to include the Nokia X6 32GB and Nokia X6 16GB, Nokia 5230, Nokia 5330, Nokia 5800 World (3G less variant of 5800), Nokia 6700 Slide, Nokia E52 and Nokia E72i (Chinese variant of the E72). Entry level prices will start from EUR 140, excluding local taxes and subsidies.
Comes with Music
Nokia has launched music services in 30 countries in the last 18 months. Comes with Music is currently available in 15 (Austria, Australia, Brazil, Finland, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden and the United Kingdom). It will be launching in India shortly.
Nokia Music and Comes with Music have had mixed fortunes with alleged low subscriber numbers in developed countries and relatively few operators deals (e.g. compared to Nokia Messaging). However it has enjoyed success in some markets, such as Singapore, where it is the most popular digital music service, and subscriber numbers in emerging markets have been described as encouraging.
DRM-free
Nokia has started rolling out a DRM-free service for its pay-per-track customers (e.g. South Africa) and it is anticipated that this will be extended to all Nokia Music Countries by the end of 2010. However, it is unlikely that DRM-free Comes with Music will be extended to other countries in the short term as Nokia have previously indicated that Comes with Music would continue to be protected by DRM due to contractual constraints. As you might expect, it is the music labels who largely control the terms for music services.
See also
Hands-on with Comes with Music
Comes with Music in the real world
DRM free Comes with Music on Nokia's roadmap
Original Comes with Music announcement (December 2007)
Update
This morning I spoke to Jyrki Rosenberg, Director of Music at Nokia, to uncover some additional details around Nokia's Comes with Music China launch. The decision to go DRM free In China was dictated by local conditions, "in any country where we launch we look at the requirements", said Rosenberg, and in China, "we have the support from the music industry to launch a DRM-free version of Comes with Music".
As expected, Rosenberg said there was nothing to announce with regards to DRM-free Comes with Music in existing markets, but he did say that DRM free music is "in line with our [Nokia's] vision of the future of digital music", suggesting Nokia continue to consider DRM free as the ideal end point in all their music services.
The Comes with Music China catalogue currently consists of 100,000's of tracks (comparable with similar local services), but this number is expected to grow quickly and should reach a comparable level with Nokia's other Comes with Music offerings (i.e. millions of tracks). Nokia has signed up more than 70 local labels and the catalogue is divided approximately 50% - 50% between local and global music. The MP3 tracks, in common with Nokia's other DRM-free music, are encoded at 256 kbps and come with full meta details (album art, tracks details etc.). This is a significant plus point over pirated tracks where low quality files, and incorrect or missing meta data are common.
The Comes with Music product in China uses the core platform made by Nokia, but it does have some specific features for China. Notably the activation system has been greatly simplified; it requires only a single click on the device to activate the service. This compares to the multi-step and pin-code system found in other Comes with Music offerings.
The brand 'Nokia Music' is gradually transitioning to the brand 'Ovi Music' (in some countries, e.g. Malaysia, this has already happened, more will follow). However the Comes with Music labeling will remain in place.