Nokia announces ‘Comes with Music’
So Nokia makes it’s big music play. Key facts:
- Pay-as-you-go + £130 handset
- Catalogue from the Big 4 Majors
- DRM – won’t work on an iPod
- Tracks playable on mobile and PC (2 device)
- After 1 year you can ‘keep the tracks’ if they remain on the same handset or you transfer to a new Nokia handset.
I do support new business models and anything which shakes up the industry and challenges Apple’s dominance but I’m not sure this a good deal for artists or consumers. For the artist, I’m doubt very much they’ll see much of the cake from this deal and it feels like it’s another step towards commoditisation of their output. For the consumer, you’ve now got another proprietary segment of your music- I believe consumers want total interoperability across all devices (a la MP3) – but the real whince for me is that I don’t belive 80% of consumers understand DRM and what they’re actually buying into. It’s only when your PC crashes or you try and swap operating systems that it then dawns on you that you don’t own that music after all – it’s licensed to you by a technology company. But on the plus side, it feels almost free so why wouldn’t the average teenager go for it…look forward to seeing the ads for this service
Full details at Nokia site
