Nokia introduces people to music!
Posted on 01. Sep, 2009 by vincenthofmann in Blog, Music, Tech, featured
Nokia isn’t selling phones, their marketers have finally realised consumers want technological enablers. We want phones which keep us in the loop, entertain us and ensure we’re never left wanting for access to knowledge.
Nokia’s new philosophy, people and places, extends across their product offering. From the ovi app store, focused on mobile innovation, to Nokia’s proprietary mail service Ovi mail to the launch of their bundled music offering – Nokia then doesn’t make mind boggling handsets, it creates converged channels through which the average consumer can plugin their 3.5mm headphone jacks in to the world and start listening.
Nokia’s recent launch party, for their bundled handset and music offering, ‘Comes with Music’ is testament to Nokia’s focus on moving their mobile offering away from techie bliss, to a little heroin for their real consumers – the monomaniacal pirate consumer who, mullet-wearing and eye-patch donning expects music delivered for free via a transcendental musical highway to their PC’s with fewer feelings of guilt than those which ensure that they are in contact with their world around them.
What is ‘Comes with Music’?
What’s particularly special about Comes with Music is that with every purchase of a new handset (see supported models) you get 12 months of unlimited access to over 5 million songs on the Nokia Music Store. This translates into 5 million songs, for free, for life.
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Basically you buy either a Nokia 5130, 5530 or 5630 and you get unlimited music downloads on either the device or one computer that you initially set the phone up on. Considering you get access to over five million tracks on the Nokia Music Store for twelve months, this is worth the price of entrance. I’m not entirely sure of the monthly cost of the other two devices but the 5130 costs a mere R100 a month.
Nokia’s ‘Comes with Music’, is a disruptive musical intervention set to expand the musical horizons of those individuals who make use of the service. As Justin Hartman suggests, the tracks aren’t entirely free of limitation, and all those imposed regulations one might expect music distributors to apply to music, do. The Nokia ‘Comes with Music’ application allows you to download 5 million tracks which are “rights-managed” – which means you can listen to your music on your handset, a single designated PC and via those CD’s you’ve burnt.
What does this mean for the South African music industry?
I chatted briefly to Jake Larsen at the ‘Comes with Music’ party – he, nursing what looked like a stiff watery concoction and I cold beer of the Heineken variety – who suggested Prime Circle’s tracks made for popular downloads in India. Big in India? Yes it’s the new Japan. They’re little people too. Nevertheless with a single music store spanning multiple nations and traversing the shores without the logistical requisites of a traditional label or distributor – bands can travel without fear of their royalties going missing at check in, or waiting to hear whether they’ve cracked an emerging market on the corporate loud hailer. They wont have to wait, they wont even know it, but they’ll be getting traction in far flung nations and reaching more fans, with the ability to share their joy immediately!
For musicians like Prime Circle, Fokofpolisiekar, Die Heuwels Fantasties and aKING this means that they can focus on the creation of music, and let the Nokia community act as a social distribution network with few limits and the potential to make sure that said bands’ gigs are well attended both domestically and abroad.
What does this mean for rights owners and the music industry at large?
Many have asked what the catch might be.
In order for ‘Comes with Music’ to be a success the relationship between the Sony BMG’s of this world and Nokia has to be mutually beneficial. Jake Larsen points out that rights owners work cooperatively with Nokia i.e. the return on their investment (the track or album) is covered almost entirely by Nokia’s very own structured partnerships with mobile network providers. In other words, the purchase of the Nokia headset includes a subscription fee (bundled with the mobile provider’s monthly rates) and this subscription fee covers a blanket “rights package” for the individual making use of the handset. In a nutshell – the music isn’t free – it’s just fucking cheap.
For the music world at large, research conducted has shown that the ‘Comes with Music’ package is likely to increase the music listener’s sonic repertoire, doubling the number of genre’s explored. So, a metal head today, may evolve into a metal-head into trance, a little hip-hop and a whole lotta Wagner. Such a musical revolution comes at just the right time! Consumers grow ever more knowledge hungry, ever more sophisticated and within the music paradigm will grow more likely to push themselves into a niches to define themselves in an ever homogenising world!
My thoughts on the product.
Give me a few months, I’ve got a lot of South African music to catch up on! I think I might just download every rock record available to me!
Hmm, I might try to find a few more Satyricon like bands.
God then there’s that Gallows record I’ve been wanting to explore a little further. I’ll get that too.
Heard a great record from a band called Oskada…I’ll get that.
Related posts:
- Nokia Launches the South African Music Store
- SaulK’s views on Nokia’s Comes With Music
- Nokia Music Store_ZA was there – The 2009 SAMAs
- Saul Kropman’s Nokia Music 5800 Xpress Review
- Nokia 5800 XpressMusic review
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As good as it seems it is not really, I purchased the Nokia 5530 @ R169 per month\and have down loaded music to my PC
and to my phone but that is the LIMIT
if My music cannot come off my pc on to a disc I my PC Is in my study so I cannot use it in and other part of my home my
phone is exactly that a phone so I cannot use it as a MP3 player all the time and the sound quality is not that good from your phone speaker, I cannot listen to my music in my car. I cannot put the music onto my Nokia 5800,
What happens if my phone gets stolen or my PC’s has a hard drive crash then where is my music for life. They say the songs are yours for life but you cannot save them to a disc or flash drive and relisten unless you are at the original Pc
so as far as I am concerned I was conned into buying a phone under false pretenses.
As good as it seems it is not really, I purchased the Nokia 5530 @ R169 per month\and have down loaded music to my PC
and to my phone but that is the LIMIT
if My music cannot come off my pc on to a disc I my PC Is in my study so I cannot use it in and other part of my home my
phone is exactly that a phone so I cannot use it as a MP3 player all the time and the sound quality is not that good from your phone speaker, I cannot listen to my music in my car. I cannot put the music onto my Nokia 5800,
What happens if my phone gets stolen or my PC’s has a hard drive crash then where is my music for life. They say the songs are yours for life but you cannot save them to a disc or flash drive and relisten unless you are at the original Pc
so as far as I am concerned I was conned into buying a phone under false pretenses. If you try to burn your downloaded music to a disc the program tells you you have not paid for this music
so how is it yours for life ???
Dear Rochelle
The whole proposition of Nokia’s Comes with Music offering is specific to the device (Nokia 5130, 5530 or 5630 Comes with Music Phones) and the PC that you register your account with. Due to the fact that you have access to over 5-million tracks and you can download these for FREE during the 12-month period and keep them, we need to ensure that the music is protected as it is a specific package linked to the Comes with Music devices.
Should you loose your device and replace it via your insurance with another Comes with Music phone, then all your tracks will still be available to you in your Music Vault via the Nokia Music Player Client on your PC and you can simply load them onto the new phone again.
Similarly there is allowance in the service for you to change your PC during a 3-year window and again all your music will be available in your Music Vault when you download the Nokia Music Player Client to your new PC.
In terms of burning Comes with Music tracks to a CD or transferring to another phone – this is unfortunately not possible, but should you purchase tracks or full-albums (R10.00 per track and R100.00 per album) from the Nokia Music Store then you are free to transfer to a CD or any other compatible phone within the licenses included in the track or album.
We hope that you can appreciate, by offering this unlimted download service at such an amazing package (you are getting your airtime on your contract and all the music you want to download) that we need to ensure that the music and artists are protected and hence the service is locked to the phone and PC. We have had a lot of positive feedback from people using the service already.
It is a very unique offering and will change the way people enjoy, explore and manage their music. We hope that you will enjoy the service, exploring new music and updating your library over the next 12-months.
Regards
The Nokia Music Store Team
Let’s not confuse knowledge and information.
Well i was wondering when you say that downloading is for free, does that mean i do not need airtime to go onto the nokia music website??? im thinking of getting me a Nokia X6 32 gig, can i still have unlimited downloads