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."
Nokia is expected to unveil the Tube, a touchscreen phone, at a music-themed event in London tomorrow. It is believed the phone will include the anticipated Comes With Music unlimited subscription service.
Wall Street Journal: "The device, which will be called the Nokia 5800, emphasizes music first and is more of a multimedia player than a full-blown smart phone."
PC World: "Motorola is hoping to stem its recent financial bloodletting by throwing its might behind the popular Android operating system. It's betting that Android is the mobile OS of the future and has reportedly begun to assemble a 350 team of Android developers to transform its mobile business."
Forbes has a brief article on the Tube.
• Sony BMG has signed up for Nokia's Comes With Music service. (Reuters)
• Nokia was not specific, but it denied paying Universal Music Group $35 for every handset that is part of the Comes With Music service. "We are not paying that amount to any record label," said a spokesperson. (paidContent)
• The International Association of Jazz Education has canceled its 2009 conference and will file for bankruptcy. (All About Jazz)
• EMI's restructuring is reportedly facing contractual obstacles: "issues concerning 'key man' clauses in artists' contracts; clauses in executive contracts that allow top staffers to leave if their responsibilities change or the company comes under new ownership or management; and challenges meeting deadlines by certain sectors of the company." An EMI representative denied all three. (Billboard)
• Current American Idol contestant David Cook does not yet have a major label deal, yet his self-released 2006 album rose to the #1 spot on Amazon.com MP3 store's album chart. As of last night, 87 customers had reviewed the album and 82 had given it five stars. (USA Today)
• EMI Christian will release twenty titles that each contain two albums by the same artist. The CD packages will list for $13.99. (Press release)
• SpiralFrog appointed former Maverick Recordings exec Russ Reiger to the new position of VP of strategic initiatives. (Press release)
• Widget-based music service Sonific will close its doors on May 1. In a message on the company's site, co-founder Gerd Leonhard blamed an "unworkable music licensing situation and the resulting lack of solid revenue modeling" and called the music industry "certifiably dysfunctional." (Sonific, via Billboard.biz)
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.
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."
