Nokia to offer unlimited music downloads... for free
If you buy a phone...
NokiaWorld Most mobiles have a music player nowadays, but most don’t come with a year's free and unlimited music downloads. Step up Nokia, which has just outlined just such a scheme, dubbed 'Comes With Music'.
The basic premise: buy a Nokia Music Store-compatible handset and you’ll be rewarded with access to an online library of tracks and allowed to download freely for 12 months. Currently, the only record label signed up is Universal, but Nokia claimed more will follow suit.
Users will be able to download the tracks either via their handset or a PC, and syncing songs from one device to the other will be possible too. Tracks will be in encoded WMA DRM format.
A Nokia spokesman told Register Hardware that the Finnish phone giant expects Comes With Music to go live in the second half of 2008. It has yet to decide which handsets will be branded 'Comes With Music', how it’ll be run and maintained, what will happen after your 12 months is up, and whether existing customers will be able to opt into the service.
However, he was very definite on the fact that new Nokia owners will be given full, free and unlimited access to the download service.
That's in stark contrast to the 80p-plus Apple charges for each track through the iTunes Music Store.
COMMENTS
Subscription...
"Once the year is complete, customers can keep all their music without having to worry about it disappearing when their subscription is over."
The music is "free" but the service is a subscription model. Its the same old Napster and Amazon type thing, but they're throwing in a free year to get people onboard first it seems.
Not so free...
...when your telco is charging you an arm and a leg to do the downloading. This is why it is a bogus "free" claim.
Well, that explains...
...why the N95 v20 firmware includes as a new feature 'OTA WMDRM (Windows Media Digital Rights Management)'.
free
"have free music for a year"
To be honest this is better than "don't have free music for a year".
See the thing about it being free is, if you don't want it.. don't use it and if you do want it.. it does what it says on the tin, gives you access to free music. It's really not possible to knock it, if you don't like it, don't buy a Nokia Comes With Music handset or don't use the service.
On a more personal note, I hate music on phones. More to the point I have the chavs on the bus who play their music aloud and think giving them more free music to pollute my airwaves is a bad idea. I like music on my non-phone devices but then I'm probably old fashioned.
URL, press release, and good news
Cynical aren't we?
http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1172937
And I quote "Once the year is complete, customers can keep all their music without having to worry about it disappearing when their subscription is over."
Nope, I have no idea how they're going to make any money out of this either!
