Nokia: Comes with Music tracks are WMA 192kbps and 128kbps

Slowly, ever so slowly, a picture is beginning to form of Nokia's all-you-can eat, free-for-1-year, keep-your-songs-for-life, Comes with Music (CWM) service. We know what it's not -- Universal's Total Music (the similarities are just a coincidence) -- and now we know more about what it is. The following details were just confirmed to us directly by Nokia:

• Audio is wrapped in an old-school, WMA DRM wrapper
  
• Songs can be burned to CD only after purchasing an upgrade of undisclosed cost
  
• Nokia has not announced any CWM devices, yet
  
• You can download music directly to your CWM device or computer using a unique PIN
  
• Songs will play only on your CWM device and the computer you registered with your CWM account
  
• Oh, and tracks will "typically" be delivered in 192kbps, while "older tracks may be delivered at 128kbps"
  

There's no mention of registering the music to new devices after the phone or PC gives up the ghost. Understandably, Nokia was not willing to discuss the financial arrangement they are offering the labels. But come on Nokia, surely you can convince 'em to drop the DRM by mid-2008, right? There are plenty of places to hide any added costs.

[BobTurbo @ Dec 12th 2007 1:54AM]

I think I will continue to buy CDs and rip to WAV :)

[Jesse S @ Dec 12th 2007 2:01AM]

WAV? You're wasting space. FLAC is where it's at, for archives.

[a ham sandwich @ Dec 12th 2007 2:12AM]

for archives, ok yes. but for practicality and compatibility - especially among portable devices - , no.

[ZeroCorpse @ Dec 12th 2007 2:12AM]

WAV?!?! Are you also using Windows 3.1 to do it?

At least do AIFF if you want a raw file, but really, if you have iTunes you can do Apple Lossless and get the same quality as a WAV/AIFF with about half the space requirement.

Unless you have "golden ears" and need to make sure you hear the sounds above 25KHz or below 16Hz (like a dog) there's no reason to worry about totally lossless files. Encode at 320Kbps with MP4 and you'll be fine. Most mere mortals with the human range of hearing can't tell the difference between an uncompresses sound file and a file compressed at 160Kbps MP4... However, you're probably special.

Tell me, can you see in the infrared and ultraviolet, too?

[Blackster @ Dec 12th 2007 2:13AM]

your the first that i've heard of that rips tracks to wav.
as jesse mentioned try flac, you won't be dissapointed and your harddisk thanks you ;)

[BobTurbo @ Dec 12th 2007 2:56AM]

Nah HDD space is not a problem these days therefore I have no reason to use FLAC or anything else. WAV is a very widely supported format in digital devices and doesn't use too much of the CPU because it doesn't need to decode anything complicated. The only problem is lack of metadata, but WMP11 fixes that with its external database and handy "find album info" type of thing (hard to discover that feature in its entirety though).

Anyway, DRMed 192kbps wma, if it is CBR, is too low quality for me (I have done casual and extremely tedious listening test). I'd be happy if they dished out 256kbps VBR mp3 though :)

[BobTurbo @ Dec 12th 2007 3:12AM]

Oh I encode to mp3 when using in portable devices of course.. was just mentioning what I do to acquire the music in a digital form on my HDD.

[Galley @ Dec 12th 2007 9:02AM]

Good luck trying to tag your WAV files.

[a ham sandwich @ Dec 12th 2007 2:11AM]

ugghh. drm. our arch nemesis.

[Jah @ Dec 12th 2007 3:11AM]

Is this really new news. Most of thee details have been in the public domain for a week. With a 8GB SDHC card and 8GB of on-board memory and FREE wifi in Europe with the Cloud this service is a fantastic bargain for those people who use their phones/MP3 players every day when commuting etc...the DRM thing is not that important when you get 16GB of free music. Get things into proportion...

[Reid Conti @ Dec 12th 2007 3:31AM]

Wow, Nokia, this sounds so convenient and easy to use! *snicker*

Look, Apple's having a hard time convincing me to buy the EMI "plus (non-DRM) tracks instead of just buying CDs and ripping myself, because I like to have the security of the physical media, come what may to my hard disk.

You're going to have a hell of a time selling this crap to ANYONE.

[L @ Dec 12th 2007 3:37AM]

That's the point really - that "crap" isn't sold, it's free with the device for a year. As Jah said, it's a great deal, DRMed or not.

But you're too trigger-happy to read and prefer to make yourself look stupid by bitching, right?

[Reid Conti @ Dec 12th 2007 4:10AM]

It's the capitalization of the Comes With Music that threw me off and made me think it was a new sentence. Thought "free for one year" was like "free with subscription" or some such.

Meh.

[Cleverboy @ Dec 12th 2007 6:43AM]

Yeah, you kinda gotta read it and understand it before your criticize it... or people just feel like you're stealing moments of their lives.

A more salient criticism of "Comes With Music", more than anything else, is SELECTION. When I checked out Vongo, it blew me away that they had a "rotating" selection, and that movies came and went away. The idea Nokia's "Comes With Music", might be a glorified promotional tool for a Universal Music Group and a "healthy" selection of less-than-popular artists, is revolting. Until Universal or Nokia says, "Sure! All the artists will be in there" and "Yep! We're adding more labels every few months!" It's going to look like a joke to me. I just downloaded Led Zepplin's Kashmere the other day on iTunes WiFi, on a whim. Even if I have to pay 99 cents, I'd prefer that to all the free songs in the world I don't want. --Sorry, 50 cent, I don't listen to you.

[Kique @ Dec 14th 2007 12:55AM]

And what happens afters the "free for 1 year"?

You will have to pay to listening to your music or something like that???...
if so.. "Comes With Music" should be "Comes With Sh!t" (after one year, of course).

[Yours Smugly @ Dec 12th 2007 7:46AM]

Comes with Microsoft... And DRM... Is complicated... Thanks for not even trying, Nokia!
-Steve Jobs

[Al @ Dec 12th 2007 12:38PM]

I dont think it would be hard for someone to write an app that strips the DRM