Carphone Warehouse today confirmed the pricing and launch details of Nokia’s ‘Comes With Music’ service, and while the proposition may appear attractive, it's already being slammed as "fatally flawed" by some detractors.
How it works: Nokia Comes With Music offers a year of unlimited access to music all within the Pay As You Go handset cost of 129.95. It launches 16 October and the available handset is the 5310 XpressMusic handset.
The service allows tracks to be downloaded directly to your computer, from where they can then be transferred to the handset. Downloaded tracks can be kept on the handset or PC - but that's where the problems begin.
Customers must register their PC and their Comes With Music device to their account before any content can be downloaded and content can then only be downloaded/synchronised between the two devices registered to the account at any one time.
Once the year’s subscription is complete, customers can keep all of their music - but two years after that one year period, users will be able to keep the content on their current device/PC but will no longer be able to transfer it to other computers.
And, because the music is shrouded in DRM, they won't be able to burn it to CD or keep it in some other way - in other words, the music won't belong to them forever.
Andrew Harrison, UK CEO of The Carphone Warehouse said: “Music lovers nationwide will now be able enjoy access to millions of tracks for a one-off charge. We believe this to be the best music offering available which completely breaks the mould of conventional online music purchases.”
Ben Drury, CEO of UK online music service 7digital.com has slammed the newly-announced Nokia 'Comes With Music' service as "fatally flawed".
"Nokia’s new service is an interesting new model for digital music but at first glance seems fatally flawed," he said.
"Why would you download music in a format that is so restrictive, when you can get the same music in a universal format that can be played and shared across any music enabled device? MP3 is the only format that works on all devices - MP3 downloads are compatible with any music player, including iPods, iPhones, Blackberries, Sony Walkmans and all other MP3 players," he added.
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(Reuters)
