Nokia's Comes With Music goes on European tour, Asia next, Americas deemed too boring
By Tim Stevens 
posted Jan 21st 2009 8:17AM
posted Jan 21st 2009 8:17AM
It was just yesterday that Reuters predicted Nokia's Comes With Music service was headed for something of a pilgrimage through the wilds of Europe, and now we have the official confirmation of this "pan European" expansion. The company has secured partnerships with music licensing and publishing big-wigs in Spain, France, Italy, Sweden, Finland, and Norway, and is indicating that Singapore and Australia are next on its to-do list. Alas there was no mention of other nations getting any sort of attention, meaning Nokia handsets in the New World are unlikely to come with anything but guilt for the forseeable future.
I love Nokia Phones because they always keep on coming up with great Phones which Look cool. I prefer looks more than features.
Agreed, I always carry two phones with me, one is for calling, another Nokia is for looking. Damn, this thing so cool, I can't help taking it out every 30 to 40 seconds just to look at it.
Yay! Looking forward to this.
Using David Blaine's voice: yay, me too, I'm so excited, I think my head is gonna blow.
no netherlands :(
the advert for comes with music is VERY misleading, it says ' Yours to download and KEEP' whats with them being aloud to say that?
Because you're allowed to keep the music on your phone and a pc after the year has ended.
Most likely the reason that this is skipping the US is the sorry horrible state of music licensing and publishing. The executives at these compaines have just seen a record breaking sales and profits year and are still pursuing litigation against Joe Average for downloading 25 songs seeking a 100+k verdict?
I certainly wouldn't want to entangle my company with that kind of incompentency...
That's worldwide. The major labels in the US are the major labels everywhere else. Some companies actually get better deals with the US divisions of the big four than other divisions, especially in the Asia markets.
And "record breaking" sales only applies to digital music now if anything, CDs are sinking fast.
Actually the real reason is that Nokia have no US base to speak of.
And Bob, it's only misleading if it's not true.
Nokia develops phones and software features in a different mindset.
In the US the cellphone providers want you to pay for everything you use the phone for... Want GPS? $9/mo, etc... { why pay for GPS? the phone has satellite gps already...} Nokia includes these things as base functionality.
For the "comes with music" to make US carriers happy it would have to stream the music from the server every time you play it. Why? to gouge people who don't have unlimited data plans.
Worse yet, the higher end nokia phones work so well with wifi, you might not even need a cellular provider... and that makes nobody but nokia money.
Yes the nokia software store sucks, but you don't need it in the first place.
I have E71 and it's very nice, the ATT prepaid card i use is solely to keep the phone from searching for network and getting bad battery life.
This service makes no difference to me, all the music i want to hear is already in my memory card and i listen to it all day long, at my desk, walking, driving ( bluetooth to the car even {81 datsun 210} ), i prefer it to listen to music in home too, i carry it around and keep the volume plenty loud without annoying neighbors.
Maybe US carriers operate this way because they consider the phone to be their property not yours, and want to extract as much money as possible.
Insightful.
wow!!a music phone that doesnt have steering wheel car integration or remote control docks.,yeah what a shiddy music phone,having to resort to your 3.5 mm technology.,how weak.,get with the times.
I'll assume your being sarcastic. However, in case you're not, most mid to high end Nokia music phones have a full Bluetooth 2.0 feature set which will enable all of the things you just wrote about.
At MidemNet they said they're looking at North America for Q2 or Q3 of this year.