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

What was just a footnote to 2007 has finally come to fruition. Sony Ericsson just went live with details on the August 25th launch of its PlayNow Arena media download site. Initially the site will offer 1 million, DRM-free songs (ramping up to 5 million) from Sony BMG, Warner Music, and EMI. It will also offer games, ringtones, applications, and themes for your mobile downloading pleasures. Other European countries will come on board later this year before it goes global in 2009. Tracks are expected to be "on par" with Apple's iTunes ($0.99 / €0.99) pricing but will cost SEK9 (about $1.43, credit card required) for the Nordic launch. Full press release after the break.

Rhapsody, the digital love-child of Real Networks and MTV, is best known for its DRM'd subscription music service. As such, the globe's population of sheep-white-earbudded, sidewalk zombies have been completely off limits to its charms. Until today. While its DRM'd subscription deals remain in place, Rhapsody is now offering unprotected MP3 downloads via its Rhapsody MP3 store and via partners including Verizon's VCAST over-the-air service and Yahoo. We're talking 5 million DRM-free tracks (generally priced at $0.99 per song, $9.99 per album) from Indies and the four majors. Uniquely, all tracks can be previewed in full before downloading. Rhapsody VP, Neil Smith said, "We're no longer competing with the iPod, we're embracing it." Perhaps, but Rhapsody's planned $50 million marketing assault on iTunes with the help of MTV's TV networks doesn't exactly make them best of friends. We're not DRM-free across the industry yet (in fact, far from it), but things are certainly moving in that direction.

Update: Signup now with the Rhapsody MP3 store and get a $10 credit which can be applied to your first album.

[Via Reuters]

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.

Nokia appears to be making some interesting moves as of late. Following rumors that the company will hazard a foray into the world of digital music sales, the Finnish mobile manufacturer has signed a deal with Microsoft to utilize its PlayReady DRM scheme. The technology, which is file-format-independent, is specifically targeted for use with mobile devices, and is intended to strengthen "security" on a wide variety of content such as music, videos, games, ringtones, and images. The DRM is backwards compatible with the existing Windows Media 10 file management, and will be implemented on upcoming S60 and Series 40 Nokia devices beginning in 2008. It seems at least somewhat possible that this arrangement could be related to the recent whisperings of Nokia's iTunes-esque plans, as DRM has already been hinted at for the supposed forthcoming service. Perhaps on August 29th all will be revealed -- but only Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo knows for sure.

It's the situation most of us love to hate: we buy that new, shiny handset with full MP3 capability to supplant that fully-fledged, big-gig DAP only to find out that MP3 files -- as clips or songs -- can't be used as ringtones. Sure, there are sometimes workarounds and hacks, but should anyone really have to go through all that? Music-based handset crippling may be coming to Canada's Rogers Wireless, as word on the street is that phones sold by the carrier, like the Nokia 5300, won't allow non-DRMed MP3 files as ringtones. We find this ludicrous on music-centric handset, but reports are that the requirement was at the behest of the music industry (who else). If you're a Rogers subscriber and are locked out of using your own homebrew MP3 clips as ringtones, we'll take it that you're miffed, big time. We gotta go DRM those MP3 files of some barking dogs we have, so catch ya later.

[Via mocoNews and BoingBoing]

Amidst the aggressive and pugnacious consumer discussions over DRM, today Microsoft introduced yet another: PlayReady. Aimed at the mobile space, PlayReady DRM takes their "open" (i.e. platform) DRM strategy to the next level, by providing subscription, rental, pay-per-view, preview and "super-distribution" (huh? maybe they mean authorized redistribution) digital rights management to not only their own media formats -- as has been done exclusively in the past -- but to other codec standards, too, including AAC, and H.264. PlayReady will be backwards compatible with WM DRM 10, so your Vongo movies or Napster tracks, for example, should still authorize and play back. But now a new crop of carriers, including AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Telefónica, O2, and Bouygues, are signed up with considerations for things that might be done with the DRM; of course, none of those other standards matter much if Microsoft isn't going to license PlayReady to the other vendors and software platforms that use formats like H.264 (and not WMA / WMV), but no announcements were made regarding non-carrier licensees, or whether PlayReady would make its way to the desktop, too.

While Verizon had its own go 'round with the law about crippling Bluetooth functionality on its phones, now South Korea's SK Telecom is facing a stiff fine of its own due to antitrust violations. The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) tagged the telecommunications giant with a $356,070 fine after taking issue with programming installed on handsets that only allowed users to play back music purchased through the firm's "Melon" music service. Interestingly, the report claims that "MP3 files obtained legally through different online sources cannot work on SK Telecom licensed phones, forcing MP3 file users to purchase only MP3 files from Melon," which leads us to believe that MP3 -- at least in this instance -- refers to any digital audio file. Nevertheless, the company now has 60 days to correct the problem and allow users to rock out to whatever tunes they so desire, so those affected by this snafu should be good to go come February.

[Via Techdirt]

NTT DoCoMo plans to work with Microsoft to build a music service based on Windows Media. The service would not allow direct downloads, but would instead require music to be transferred from a PC to a cellphone. The service would work with Windows Media audio from over 100 providers, and will launch this summer on the F902iS (pictured), one of DoCoMo's recently announced HSDPA-capable phones.

Taking a cue from other design-obsessed companies such as Apple and Sony, Nokia has announced plans to open a line of retail locations in the U.S. -- the first ones outside Russia and perhaps Finland that we're aware of -- and even better, will be offering models not available from carriers or traditional channels. The flagship store is set to open in Chicago on June 21, and will sell "virtually anything that could possibly be available in this market," according to a Nokia spokesperson, including such high-end handsets as the recently-launched N93 and N73 3.2 megapixel cameraphones, N91 4GB musicphone, and UMTS-enabled N80 smartphone (which happens to sport a three megapixel CCD as well). PC Mag's article on the upcoming stores, the second of which is scheduled to hit New York before the end of the year, also includes an update on the N91, which will apparently receive a key software upgrade sometime after launch that enables playback of DRM-protected content.

Update: Several readers have very kindly pointed out that Nokia has stores in much of Europe and Asia.

Just in case you had any concerns that cellphone content wasn't secure enough, Microsoft has announced what the company is calling "significant investments" in DRM technologies for mobile devices.  Details are a bit scarce, with no exact financial details, but Microsoft's Kevin Johnson, co-president of the Platforms & Services Division, said the move was made in response to demands from the company's wireless partners and, of course, to "give consumers what they want -- seamless experiences with premium content on a wide range of mobile devices." (See? This is all about what you want, after all.) Microsoft's Windows Media Digital Rights Management is currently the most widely used DRM in the world, with this latest move likely to only further solidify that position.