Nokia's "free," all-you-can-eat, music subscription service is set to world premier in the UK next month before hitting continental Europe and Asia in 2009. Nokia already has Universal Music, Sony BMG and Warner Music on board and plans to have EMI signed before launch -- in total, Nokia expects to offer some 2.1 million tracks at launch. While touted as free, the service costs will be baked into the price of Nokia's pre-pay 5310 XpressMusic Comes With Music Edition handset (currently priced between £70-£80 for the pay-as-you-go, non-CwM handset) when purchased though the UK's Carphone Warehouse. You must then purchase another CwM-compatible device at the end of the year in order to continue downloading tracks. For those not wishing to re-up with Nokia, your 5310 CwM edition phone will continue to make / receive calls and text messages and, like your computer, continue to playback all those DRM-wrapped WMA tracks -- they will not play anywhere else. While the approach is interesting, the DRM-enabled time-bomb and device lock-in makes the entire model sound fatally flawed to us -- though we're sure that'll be hacked away soon enough. Come on Amazon, now is the time to take your MP3 store global and show these fools how it's done.

Update: Expect the service to launch at, or shortly after, a Nokia Comes With Music press event scheduled for October 2nd.

[Via mocoNews]

Read -- FT
Read -- Guardian
Read -- Nokia press release

[Via Yahoo News]

Okay, so maybe the execs out there in Finland have their ducks in a row after all. After rumors spread that Nokia was going to be taking a financial beating if consumers really took to its forthcoming all-you-can-eat Comes with Music service (a strange gamble, to be sure), the head of its music division is hitting back, saying that they "expect to make money both from [their] traditional device sales, as well as from the 'Comes With Music' service." Of course, "expect to make money" is a long way from actually "making money" in many cases -- and Nokia still has no official comment on how its Comes with Music label deals are structured -- so we guess we won't really know how this all went down until a few more quarters of earnings calls down the road.

[Thanks, Janne]

The latest round of rumors regarding the goings-on behind the scenes of Nokia's lofty Comes with Music paint a bleak picture for profitability -- but even scarier, they suggest that the company could be simply blown out if the initiative takes off. The problem stems from the claim that Nokia's deals with labels represent a huge gamble: that buyers of Comes with Music-compatible phones won't download more than a certain number of songs, believed to be 35. Above that, Espoo's no longer covered by a flat fee and pays the wholesale per-song rate for its customers' indiscretions. Clearly, either the rumor's wrong or Nokia seems to be betting against its own success here -- but the recent departure of a key exec involved with Comes with Music lends some credence to the latter. Maybe we don't speak for everyone here, but if we're paying a premium on our phone to earn a full year of all-you-can-eat tracks, you'd best believe we're taking full advantage.

[Via mocoNews]

Step aside Universal Music, Sony BMG is now offering its catalog of music on Nokia's Comes With Music service. You know, the freebie, all you can eat music download service expected to launch mid-2008 (oops) "second half" of 2008. Remember, you'll have to buy a Comes with Music device first and the free download period from the Nokia Music Store (to your PC or phone) only lasts for 12 months. Still, consumers keep the downloaded (and DRM'd) tracks at the end of the period and "can transfer their downloaded material by substituting their new [Comes with Music] device or computer for the original devices" later on. While no Comes with Music devices have been announced yet, we certainly wouldn't be surprised if Nokia's touch-screen Tube or some other S60 touch device was first.

Remember Nokia's Comes with Music (CWM) service? The service which includes a full year of free DRM'd music downloads with the purchase of a CWM cellphone. Up to this point, Nokia has refused to comment on the financial details of the service. Important since "free" is expected to be anything but free with those music costs tucked neatly into the price of the handset, the carrier's data plan, or both. In an interview published by Bloomberg, Tero Ojanpera, Nokia Executive VP, discussed CWM and says that, "In those cases where we cooperate with operators, there will be an arrangement so they can get a piece." Something previously hinted at by Nokia's CEO back in December. Still no word on who, beyond Universal, will offer their music on the new service or how much the new bundled handsets will cost. Ojanpera did repeat that CWM won't be available on existing Nokia devices. For its part, Universal says that DRM is a definite component of the service -- a possible deal-breaker if that DRM limits your CWM downloads to a single handset and PC for eternity.

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"
  

Understandably, Nokia was not willing to discuss the financial arrangement they are offering the labels. There's also no mention of registering the music to new devices after the phone or PC gives up the ghost. 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.

Remember Nokia's utopian / not-so-free and crippled "free" Comes with Music offering? We've been in contact with Nokia who'd like to clarify the service. According to Nokia, Comes with Music is, "completely independent from the Universal music store." Nokia further distances themselves by stating that, "Universal was simply the first of these to publicly sign on. The fact that there are some similarities shows how the industry is thinking about the future of digital music - but its not a sign of any direct linkage between the offerings." So, now we know what it isn't, but we still don't know exactly what it is. Regardless, anything can happen between now and the launch in "mid 2008" -- an eternity on a digital music evolution timeline. Perhaps the lack of detail is Nokia's way of farming public opinion before the details are announced. Wouldn't be a first.

So here's the deal. Nokia just launched a "Comes with Music" program. No, not software, but a deal which allows you to buy a Nokia device with a year of unlimited, subscription access to "millions of tracks." Once the year is complete however, customers can keep all their downloaded music -- it doesn't disappear just because the subscription is over. What's the catch? Don't know yet. We know it's limited to Universal Music Group tracks for the time being but there's no mention of any fees, DRM, advertising, or other restrictions. We'll update you as soon as we get more.

Update: It's free for one year! All the Universal Music tracks you can download for 12 months can be yours. The offer doesn't begin until mid 2008, just as long as the deal doesn't fall apart by then.