Digital Media

According to a report in Forbes, phone giant Nokia has delayed the U.S. launch of its Comes With Music service until 2010.

Nokia first announced Comes With Music back in December 2007, then revealed more details almost a year later as the service launched in the U.K. Under the plan, cell phone buyers pay some extra money up front and, in exchange, get the right to download as many songs as they want from Nokia's music store for one year. Those downloads don't expire when the user's cell phone contract ends, but they are copy-protected, limiting usage to the phone and one computer that's registered with the service. Still, it seemed like a reasonable deal if Nokia could convince cellular carriers to subsidize some of the cost, and early reviews from the U.K. were mostly positive. I even suggested that Microsoft follow Nokia's lead whenever it launches its next-generation consumer-focused smartphones.

I thought the launch of the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music phone in the U.S. would be accompanied by the launch of the service in the U.S. as well, but it wasn't. So what's the problem? My guess is that Nokia's facing the same licensing economics that are limiting free download service Spotify to the European market only. Nokia may also be waiting for a more fundamental transition: the company has said that it's considering removing digital rights management limits from future iterations of the service, allowing the downloads to be played and shared between an unlimited number of devices. (In fact, the Comes With Music DRM scheme was bypassed almost immediately, proving for the umpteenth time that the concept is flawed.) It's only a matter of time: three years ago, nobody envisioned the content owners abandoning DRM on single-song downloads. Now, there's not a per-song download service that still uses it.

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(Credit: Flickr)

Flickr's mobile Web site hasn't traditionally been in step with its popular Web app. A fresh lick of paint and some API work under the hood brings the two experiences much closer in line.

On Thursday, Yahoo-owned Flickr pushed out a very worthwhile upgrade to its mobile-optimized site, m.flickr.com.

Video streaming is the big draw. As on Flickr.com since last April, anyone accessing Flickr from an iPhone or iPod Touch can play videos hosted on Flickr's servers. In a few weeks, Flickr will unlock this capability for anyone using a Webkit, Opera Mobile (but not Mini), for Firefox Mobile browser.

Of course, only pro subscriber members can upload videos at this point, each capped at 90 seconds in length and treated as a "long photo" rather than as a video per se.

In addition to getting video on board, Flickr has also reorganized the mobile home screen. Its freshly buffed layout now grants quick access to the activity feed, friends' recent uploads, and to the daily crop of hand-picked photos.

You'll also now be able to do maintenance work, like add contacts, mark images as favorites, adjust privacy settings, and browse interesting photos, all basic stuff that Flickr's mobile site should have already allowed. Nevertheless, we're happy to see it now.

Flickr's new mobile site worked great during testing, though its performance is limited by the strength of your data connection and video playback may as well be useless in Edge territory. There are also a few features that Flickr is leaving to third-party developers of native apps, like a quick way to take and update photos and video (where supported) within the app interface itself.

The changes, big and small, will better serve the 50 percent more visitors browsing Flickr photos from their phones, and will go a long way to making Flickr a more unified service from any outlet. The upgrade may also give Yahoo a boost of consumer confidence in the face of its recently sagging fortunes.

When consulting online traffic maps to form your plan of attack for hitting the streets, how often do you suspect that the red, yellow, and green colors indicating the various speeds of traffic flow are inaccurate, show outdated data, or that they'll change by the time you get there?

The concept of online traffic maps makes a lot of sense, but until they're foolproof, users will always be skeptical. A new collaborative project between UC Berkeley and Nokia is trying to provide mapped traffic data with more accuracy than ever before. How? By tapping into the ubiquity of GPS-enabled cell phones and the willingness of drivers like you to share your location information.

Here's how the pilot project, called Mobile Millennium, will work. Volunteers with phones running on T-Mobile or AT&T's services can register their phones and download the appropriate software through the pilot's Web site. Nokia does not need to be the manufacturer of the hardware, but the phone obviously needs GPS and has to be able to run Java applications, like Blackberries and iPhones. And yes, right now, you do need to live in the Bay Area.

Registration is free and takes less than five minutes. At this point, your work is essentially done. As you drive with your phone in the car, you'll cross the virtual trip lines placed every quarter mile on the NAVTEQ maps on the program. When you do, your phone knows to send its coordinates and traveling speed back to the engineers at UC Berkeley, who have created the algorithms to process the data.

This kind of program will only work where there's a large enough sample size to analyze, and that may not happen for a several months or even years. The advantage of this program, however, is that people with cell phones drive on roads that traffic cameras and actual trip lines simply cannot access to provide travel information. Imagine having access to traffic stats for city streets, rural roads, and vacation routes--and not just commuter thoroughfares.

Updated on 10/10/08 at 11:35 a.m. PST with more details about beginning a voice search on Nokia devices.

You can now speak your search into Yahoo's search widget for Nokia start screens.

(Credit: Yahoo Inc.)

Voice-responsive search has been available from Yahoo's OneSearch 2.0 application for select BlackBerry phones since this last April, but until this week only a few of you could to try it out.

On Thursday, Yahoo slipped voice recognition into the OneSearch 2.0 home-screen shortcut--available for a smattering of Nokia Series 60 phones--and in the Yahoo! Go 3.0 files for select BlackBerry, Nokia Series 40, and Nokia Series 60 models, such as the BlackBerry Curve and high-end Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones. Those using older versions of either of these apps will have to download them anew to get the chatty update.

Operating the voice search is simple--on BlackBerry, just hold down on the green 'talk' button and speak your search term. OneSearch will start scouring Yahoo's database for answers as soon as you let go. Nokia owners can hit the pencil key to get going. Those without pencil keys will launch tier search by pressing the right shortcut key (labeled Y! OneSearch) and speaking or typing into the search box that appears.

Although voice-recognition technology is constantly improving as a whole, many voice searches I've tried using various applications have fallen flat. It helps to launch uncomplicated searches in quieter areas. I've experienced my share of success, but have also had to punch in search terms or edit them in the search field when the speech recognition software bungled a command or when the search engines didn't return the results I had in mind. Still, it's good to have options, and as the technology improves, voice searches will save plenty of typing time and hassle.

You can download the OneSearch 2.0 with a voice start-screen widget for select Nokia Series 60 phones by navigating to m.yahoo.com/shortcut from a PC or phone. The new version of Yahoo Go 3.0 (technically 3.0.4.6), which includes the voice-supporting Yahoo OneSearch widget, can be found for some Nokia and BlackBerry models at get.go.yahoo.com from a PC or the phone's native browser.

It's hard to figure why anyone would do any prospecting in the stony terrain of digital-music subscriptions.

This week, Best Buy acquired the remade and beleaguered version of Napster for a song. The deal is likely bad news for RealNetwork's Rhapsody, the current engine behind Best Buy's digital music store and one of the pioneers in music subscriptions. (I wrote a sidebar about the troubles RealNetworks' Rhapsody may face if Best Buy walks.)

And don't forget, the Yahoo Unlimited subscription service was shuttered earlier this year.

The all-you-can-eat music services are the ones getting chewed up. So why do rumors persist that Apple is interested in getting into music subscriptions? In March, the Financial Times reported that Apple had talked with the top record labels about the possibility of launching a service that would give iTunes users access to its entire library in exchange for paying a premium for iPods or iPhones.

Last month, an anonymous tipster sent e-mails to several Mac rumor sites claiming that Apple intended to charge $130 for "iTunes Unlimited" starting in October. My music industry sources confirmed that Apple has discussed a subscription service with the music industry but said that Apple has yet to sign any licensing deals.

Still, the question is what motivated Apple to consider subscriptions. And it isn't just Apple. CNET News reported on Thursdaythat Sony Ericsson, the mobile-phone maker, will launch a music service--that will likely include a subscription offering--as early as next week. The move is obviously designed to compete with Nokia's "Comes with Music" initiative. Nokia has begun selling phones that enable owners to access music from three of the four largest recording companies (EMI has yet to sign on) for 12 months. When that period is over, owners get to keep the music but must pay a fee to continue the service.

Ease the pain
What the Nokia and Sony Ericsson services have in common with Napster, Yahoo, and all the subscription services that have come before is that they are designed to generate a recurring income for the music industry. What Nokia, and presumably Sony Ericsson, will do differently is fold subscription charges into a customer's phone bill, where the music industry hopes consumers will find it less painful to pay.

This is just one of the many digital business models the labels are testing. What the cell phone companies must do now is prove they can overcome the obstacles that tripped up other services. One of the biggest challenges, if not the biggest, is consumers apparently don't like the idea of their music disappearing if they stop paying fees.

"I'm not certain how big the consumer (adoption) is going to be," said Mike McGuire, a digital-music analyst with Gartner. "When people think of subscriptions, they think of their magazines and newspapers. When I stop my New Yorker subscription, (the publisher) doesn't come to my house and take back old issues...even though my wife may want him to."

The industry has fared poorly, but perhaps Apple sees something no one else does. The company has a record of making money where others have failed. Digital-music players hadn't found much more than a niche market until the iPod.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs said during the "Let's Rock" press gathering earlier this month that iTunes has 65 million credit cards in its database. Apple already has these people used to buying music from iTunes. How much more of a sales pitch would be required to get them to pay a monthly fee for access to the iTunes' library?

Chris Castle, a longtime music insider and attorney, says he believes there's a market for subscription-based cell phones.

"There are people out there who have high-end home audio systems that want high fidelity and clean copies of songs," Castle said. "They don't want to rip lots of content. They aren't willing to pay a $1 a pop for it, but they'd be willing to pay something for it. I think preloaded hard drives are a business, provide they offer lots of stuff. The questions are what do the publishers want for it? Can you make a deal?"

Castle sees the potential for artist-driven or genre-driven preloaded devices.

Risks galore
There are still plenty of risks, Castle acknowledged. Here's just a few of them. Any new music service, whether selling downloads or subscriptions, must compete against iTunes, the No. 1 music retailer in the land, which just happens to be tethered to the best-selling digital music player, the iPod. In addition, mainstream consumers still aren't familiar with the music-subscription model. Napster and Rhapsody both spent a lot of money trying to educate consumers on how the music-subscription model works.

While some download stores, such as Amazon.com, have begun selling songs in the MP3 format--which means they will play on the iPod--subscription services still wrap music in digital rights management software. That means those songs won't play on the iPod.

Another big problem is that most of the subscription services that have come before have had to make themselves compatible with the plethora of iPod competitors. That meant every time a device maker upgraded its firmware, Yahoo or Napster had to make sure their service still functioned properly on the device.

Since Rhapsody and many of the other subscription services were forced to work with Windows Media, they often had little say on when upgrades or fixes to the software were made, said a source close to Rhapsody.

And when it comes to consumer adoption, there's not much to prove the cell phone music services will have an easier time acquiring customers. Research firm Strategy Analytics said Thursday a recent survey showed that although 83 percent of respondents listened to music on their phones, only 6 percent of the tracks were obtained from mobile stores.

Who knows, Apple could come in and prove the experts wrong, but at this point a better strategy appears to be to let others keep taking their whacks.

Mobile phone company Sony Ericsson is expected to launch a music service within the next week designed to compete with Nokia's "Comes with Music" offering, according to recording-industry sources.

The Sony Ericsson service is being launched in partnership with British firm Omnifone, which provides unlimited music downloads to mobile service providers, according to the sources, who added that all four major recording companies have signed on.

The sources said Omnifone's MusicStation is expected to power the service, which may include a music-subscription model. A representative from Omnifone was not immediately available. And a spokesman for Sony Ericsson said the company had nothing to announce at this time and does not comment on rumors.

"This is the new frontier for a lot of these phone companies," said Mike McGuire, a digital music analyst. "Clearly Sony Ericsson can't be ignored. There should be some interesting potential in terms of linkage to other parts of Sony. Maybe you see it tied to the PlayStation or Sony Pictures. It's a pretty interesting ecosystem...but again, these things always look good on paper."

Sony Ericsson's service is obviously a challenge to Nokia's highly anticipated Comes with Music service.

Nokia attracted gads of attention when it announced it would offer the bundled music phone package a year ago. The company launched the new bundle earlier this month in conjunction with U.K.-based cell phone retailer Carphone Warehouse.

For the music industry, Comes with Music--which is expected to come to the U.S. sometime soon--is attractive because its really a new subscription model.

The way it works in the U.K is, starting in October, consumers there will be able to buy a Nokia 5310 Xpress Music device that will come with a free one-year music subscription to Nokia's Music Store. With that subscription, Nokia users can download as many songs as they want. And once the subscription ends, they will be able to keep those tracks.

Nokia has no plans to offer extended subscriptions to Comes With Music users. Instead, the only way to get more unlimited music downloads is to upgrade to a new Nokia Comes With Music device. While the 5310 Xpress Music device is the only one selling at the moment, Nokia plans to announce other Comes With Music phones later. Still, the fundamental strategy for Nokia appears to be using the music to sell more devices.

Nokia's strategy is a clear differentiator from other music stores and services. Apple's iTunes requires users pay for individual songs or albums. Verizon Wireless and RealNetworks have launched the new Rhapsody music store for mobile phones. It also allows subscribers to download and listen to as much music as they like for $15 a month. But once users stop paying the subscription fee, access to the music disappears.

Currently, users can only access the Nokia Music Store in 11 countries: Finland, the U.K., Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, France, Sweden, and Spain. The company has said it plans to roll out more markets, but it hasn't said when. Considering that the North America is one of Nokia's most underrepresented markets, it's unlikely the Nokia Music store will be available in the U.S. anytime soon.

Nokia has deals with three of the four major record labels--Sony BMG, Universal, and Warner Music. It doesn't yet have a deal with EMI. But it's expected that EMI will sign on soon.

CNET News staff writer Marguerite Reardon contributed to this story.