At the end of last year, Nokia introduced “Comes With Music” - an unlimited, free one year service for music downloads from Nokia Music Store that you get with your purchase of company’s music phones.

You can keep your music even after your one year is up, and upload it to your PC for listening, although it’s still protected by Windows DRM. You will also need to pay an ‘upgrade fee’, should you wish to burn your tracks to a CD.

Comes With Music was announced in partnership with the major record label, Universal Music Group. Last month, there was talk about EMI joining this service, but apparently Nokia is still in negotiations with them.

Instead, Nokia have announced today that another one of the ‘big four’ record labels - Sony BMG - has joined Comes With Music. This will offer an even larger catalog of recordings for the subscribers to download.

The service looks very promising, despite the DRM; but someone has to pay the record label groups for all this, right? ArsTechnica reported a few days ago that Nokia will apparently be paying UMG $35 per each handset sold that “Comes With Music”.

It’s unclear yet what price other labels will charge Nokia for access to their catalogs, but it shouldn’t be very different. That could very well mean over $100 per phone, but obviously Nokia won’t want to pass the cost to the consumers in order to keep a competitive price of their new models.

Comes With Music is expected to launch with a range of new Nokia music phones that will be released in the second half of 2008.

Via: Nokia.com

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Posted on 22 Apr 08 - Filed in Nokia, Wireless - - Written by Andrius

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