It's been a long wait, but more than a year after Nokia announced its Comes With Music plan--free music downloads built into the price of the phone--the first Comes With Music phone is apparently coming to the U.S. in February.
(Credit:
CBS Interactive)
According to The Nokia Blog, the Nokia 5800 Xpress Music (a.k.a. The Tube) will go on sale at U.S. retailers on Feb. 26 for a suggested price of $399. No carrier partners have been announced, so there's probably little chance of a carrier subsidy reducing the price at launch. CNET reviewed a preview version of the phone back in December and liked it fairly well, but I'm most interested in how the Comes With Music plan will stack up against Apple's iTunes.
According to the information CNET got back in October, when the 5800 was unveiled in the U.K., Comes With Music tracks will be playable on the phone and one PC, and will not expire after the year is up. From the reviews I've seen, it's truly an unlimited downloading service--there's no hidden limit, although Nokia's terms of use would let them cancel your service for "abusive or excessive downloading."
The experience is a little clunkier than iTunes from what I've read in the reviews. The phone comes with a card containing a code; enter that code into the Web-based Nokia Music Store and all prices in the store disappear. Everything has to be sideloaded--there's no direct over-the-air downloading to the phone as you can do with the iPhone--and it's PC only. You can't transfer the songs to any other phone, even another Comes With Music phone, nor can you burn them to a CD without paying extra. Songs are encoded in the Windows Media Audio format (which I've always thought is an excellent audio codec, for all of the other flaws with Microsoft's digital media strategy and products), and of course come with DRM to limit what you can do with them.
Still--everything you download lives on your PC forever. So while $399 is a significant premium over the iPhone, add in the price of a few thousand PC-tethered downloads, and it looks pretty competitive. At the very least, it could be an extremely convenient way to discover music--you can always buy full CD-burnable tracks of the songs you really like, then transfer them to other devices in other formats later on.
Will it make a dent in iPhone sales? Not without a carrier agreement, no.
I've written about Nokia's Comes With Music service several times, but the service officially kicked off Wednesday in the U.K. And the first hands-on reviews--from Music Ally and IDG News--are mostly positive.
The Nokia 5310 Xpress Music is the first phone to support Nokia's Comes With Music initiative.
(Credit: CNET Reviews)In particular, reviewers are praising the PC software's intuitive interface and the relatively painless registration process. Access to the free music comes courtesy of a code printed on the inside of the phone's box. Downloads are almost unlimited, although Nokia has a clause that warns it might temper downloads if a certain undisclosed average number of downloads per user is reached.
The big problems: no burning to CD unless you pay per download, no over-the-air downloads, and a slow transfer time from PC to phone. Nobody seems to be gasping too much at the fact that the songs are in Windows Media Audio format and are DRM-protected, meaning you will never be able to play them on an iPod or other device if you ever grow tired of your Nokia phone.
I'm still having a bit of trouble figuring out the target market here. Digital music fans...who want to download a lot of new music without paying for every song and have never heard of free file-sharing...and who want a choice of phone types at different prices (the 5310 has PIM-like capabilities but isn't a smartphone, while the 5800 is a full smartphone with touch screen and more)...but are Nokia loyalists and don't intend to play their downloads on any other portable device, ever. How many people fit into all those categories?
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