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Nokia to offer unlimited music downloads... for free

If you buy a phone...

Cloud based data management

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.

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Latest 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.

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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.

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Anonymous Coward

Well, that explains...

...why the N95 v20 firmware includes as a new feature 'OTA WMDRM (Windows Media Digital Rights Management)'.

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