Nokia ‘Comes With Music’ Adds Warner To Roster
Nokia mobile music solution ‘Comes With Music’ is on its way in the third quarter of this year, alongside the first phones to take advantage.
Before the release however, is a lot of behind the scenes alignment with the big names in the music industry to ensure that the system is furnished with a diverse roster. Adding to Universal and Sony BMG, Nokia have announced today they have secured Warner Music Group, the home of everyone from Eric Clapton to Missy Elliott by way of rock group Stone Sour.
A $2.9 billion market in 2007, the music download sector is an area the labels are looking to recoup from as CD sales fall dramatically year on year.
A robust alternative to iTunes, Comes With Music is an effort to placate the labels, offering a network where for an annual fee users are given access to a vast resource of music via audio stream or download. At the end of the twelve months, users are able to retain all downloaded music from the site. Sounds like commercial suicide, but Nokia made a good point for the sense behind it. If you can legally download as much music as you want for a year, and keep it forever, why would you bother pirating at all?
With the holy trinity of the the largest labels on board and a revenue structure that challenges the pay-per-track iTunes template, Nokia’s Comes With Music could pose a serious threat to Apple’s superiority. This gives Nokia the flexibility to attract small labels who will be guaranteed to see money as opposed to a cut of limited sales, as well as the majors who have never seen eye-to-eye with Apple over pricing.
Let’s just hope that Apple don’t overtake Nokia in handset sales whilst they set their sights on the music download market. With approximately 435 million Nokias sold in 2007 alone, Apple certainly have their work cut out…
Source: Warner Music Group
Tags: Comes With Music, Nokia
