I see a few big problems with the rollout of Nokia's Comes With Music. First, as I mentioned earlier, there were reports today that the initial Nokia handset to offer Comes With Music, the 5130, will not offer over-the-air downloads. The service works only with pay-as-you-go plans. Carriers have yet to offer CWM subscribers free reign on their networks. This means CWM lacks the immediacy that should be one of its greatest strengths. Want to hear a song? Write yourself a note and download it the next time you're in front of your PC.

More likely confusion comes from the wording in the marketing, as can be seen in the Carphone Warehouse press release about CWM. When the companies use phrases like "the downloaded tracks can be kept on the users handset or PC forever" and "customers can keep all of their music," there is a certain expectation that the files are not protected or at least will be hassle-free. In the case of CWM, files will have Microsoft DRM. I think people may read "forever" and "keep" and think of either portability (not happening) or MP3s (different file format). At best this is poorly worded. At worst...well, let's just say I'm sure the people who wrote it chose their words very carefully.