Music GroupsNokia's Comes With Music service launches today tomorrow and there is already one review. Music Ally has positive things to say about the PC application that acts as music store and player (it hasn't yet reviewed how the service works on the mobile device). It notes the emphasis on user experience and intuitiveness. One item of note: Tracks are 192 kbps WMA files.
Update: Music Ally has another post that notes CWM is missing some big names.
EMI, the last holdout of the four major music groups, is now on board Nokia's Comes With Music service (press release). The news comes on the same day the new Nokia Tube touchscreen phone was unveiled and more details about Comes With Music have surfaced.
More on Comes With Music and Nokia's approach to music and media can be found on the virtual page for today's Nokia Remix event in London.
Reviews of Nokia's Tube touchscreen mobile phone are hitting the web, and some include some details of the integrated Comes With Music service. Aside from the product reviews, the key news of the day is the XpressMusic 5310 with the bundled Comes With Music service will cost £130.
The Times Online: "The 5800 Tube provides one-touch access to browse and purchase tracks from the store. There are strong music features to go with Comes with Music - a graphic equaliser and support for all the main digital formats. But there is only 8GB of memory in the form of a microSD card (enough for 6,000 tracks) and many music fans will be disappointed. Many other phones (including the iPhone) already offer 16GB. Nokia says a 16GB card will be available in 2009."
Stuff.tv gets hands on with the Tube: "The music and camera sections use the touchscreen nicely, and nicely show off the hi-res, 640x360 screen."
Engadget's hands-on review: "Appropriately nicknamed the Tube, the device has a number of Nokia peculiarities that could appeal to certain sensibilities, but probably won't be taking a big bite out of existing touchphone market share -- at least in the S60-phobic United State."
Gizmodo's hands-on review: "The 5800 seems like a solid mid-level touch phone for music—especially if Comes With Music pans out as a cool service. But don't plan on using this thing for heavy emailing or texting—you'll probably be using T9 text entry with the touch dialpad or the stylus for most of your text entry unless you have the patience of a monk, which kind of defeats the point for an all-touch device these days."
Moconews.net has a couple of posts worth reading. One covers an interview by paidContent's Rafat Ali of John Faith, the GM and VP of MySpace Mobile at the Mobile Entertainment Live conference. About MySpace Music Faith said:
It’s launching in the next few weeks. It’s a free ad-supported streaming service, which let’s everyone become their own DJ. In the music space, we want to provide one on mobile, too, and we are aggressively looking into it....You still have a tight control on the distribution and revenue around that. We’ll be working with them to make a compelling MySpace mobile component in the future.
The other post covers a Mobile Entertainment Live panel with Michael Nash, Warner Music Group's EVP of Digital Strategy and Business Development, and Paul Smith, head of major label relations for Nokia. Plenty of commentary on Nokia's Comes With Music service, platitudes offered by both Nash and Smith for the others' companies and a few tidbits about new models. Said Nash, "There’s a philosophical shift that will be required that will be focused on this kind of access model." Very true.
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.
There's finally news about the launch of Nokia's Comes With Music. UK consumers will get the first crack at the music service through the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic phone. Comes With Music has over two million tracks from three majors (EMI is still a holdout) and many indies. Pricing has not been announced, but the head of Nokia in Greak Britain told Forbes the handset would retail for "significantly" more than the current model. The Financial Times reported Nokia has found that its pay-as-you-go customers will pay between £100 and £300 for the handset and the music service. A 5310 handset without the service currently sells for £70 to £80. Nokia will offer more information on October 2.
The service will be bundled with the handset and included in its price. Users can download an unlimited number of tracks for one year. Those tracks can be kept indefinitely but will be accessed only on the handset if the service is not renewed after one year. Nokia and most reports are quiet on the issue, but Comes With Music is said to use Microsoft DRM.
As of today, one thing that could hamper the rollout of Comes With Music is the lack of carrier participation. Nokia does not yet have a mobile partner for the service.
A few specifics on Nokia's "Comes With Music" initiative came to light today. (Read this December 2007 press release for more info.) Comes with Music is a plan the mobile operator to allow subscribers access to a large catalog of music. Nokia would pay a fee for access to a music company's catalog of music. The fee would be absorbed by Nokia and presumably passed on (at least in part) to the consumer.
The Hollywood Reporter's Mark Halper says an unnamed, "well-informed mobile industry executive" put the per-handset amount at $35.
paidContent's James Quintana Pearce did a bit of digging and found a source that said the per-unit fee starts around $33.50 for the first 2.5 million units and scales down at higher volumes. The plan is said to include "a limited but relatively high number songs." The most interesting tidbit is the source's claim that Comes With Music is based on a download -- not a subscription -- model.
For those of you doing some quick math on the back of the nearest envelope, UMG had 28.8% of the global recorded market in 2007. Divide the market share into the per-unit fee of $33.50 and you get $116.32. That's what access to all music would cost if the other majors and all indies negotiated equivalent rates on a pro-rata basis.
Interesting post at MocoNews from the World Mobile Congress. Rob Wells, Universal Music Group SVP of Digital, talked about the goals of the company with an almost cinematic flair.
The start and endgame for Universal and, indeed, the industry worldwide, is providing consumers with blanket access through a celestial jukebox anytime, at home, in the car. This is the next step in the utopian future for music...
And this about temporal pricing:
If an artist has just delivered an album from studio, we could potentially deliver it to a limited number of users for a higher price. It’s something we’re quite keen to develop; for example, through our own B2C channels - artists websites.
There are different definitions of "utopian future." UMG sees paid services as the future, as evidenced by its Total Music plan and Nokia's Comes With Music mobile service.. Others see the best route as unhindered P2P, which would certainly have more content and would be closer to a true celestial jukebox.
The pricing comment is worth taking a look at. Labels have yet to do a whole lot of direct-to-consumer stuff (other than merchandise) but that should change. Fan clubs and artist websites offer ways to deliver music and bring a sense of scarcity to digital downloads. If the iTunes and the Amazons of the world won't raise their prices for time-sensitive releases, artists and labels can go it alone.
For those of you wondering what will become of all-you-can-eat music services in the next few years, mosey on over to this post at paidContent that quotes Sony BMG's global digital music president Thomas Hesse.
This idea of bundling music or access ... enjoying music on a fairly large scale with either a device or with access, be it a cell phone contract or a cable contract ... to me, that’s the next frontier. We feel quite optimistic about it. ...Access to music so that music becomes something you can access in a very free way with very little encumburences.
Last October, reports surfaced that Universal Music Group was working on an industry-owned music service called Total Music plan, an unlimited (but presumably tethered) music service whose fees would be embedded in the price of compatible hardware. In addition, UMG is working with Nokia on Comes With Music, a music service for Nokia handsets. The service's costs will be embedded in the device's price.
Coolfer is optimistic about this kind of embedded service. A great number of people don't put much value on digital music, and they care little about subscription services. The best way to frame the cost of such a service, in order to take it to the masses, is to render it as invisible as possible. Labels would receive income from the sale of every device, which is far better asking device purchasers to take a second step and opt in a music service. Maybe then would consumers embrace music services in light of their inability to work with Apple products, their DRM, their catalogs that don't dig as deep as the illegal options.
One thing is for sure: Either subscription services have done a horrible job marketing their products, or consumers just flat out don't want them.
A Nokia executive vice president offered some information on the company's Comes With Music service at the MIDEM conference. Bloomberg has the article.
• Nokia will share revenue with mobile operators. Said the executive, "In those cases where we cooperate with operators, there will be an arrangement so they can get a piece."
• Downloaded tracks will come with DRM. Users will be able to transfer tracks from handset to PC, but will not be able to transfer tracks between PCs.
• The service will not be available on existing phones. "You actually buy a device that is complete," he said. "You can't buy the same device without the content."
