... just not direct to a mobile network

So Nokia has failed to persuade the mobile networks to stock it’s “Comes With Music” phones, notably the

Tags: comes with music, mobile, Nokia, nokia 5330

Our friends over at Nokia have announced their ‘Comes With Music‘ subscription service is going to launch here in Blighty first.

Comes with DRM Time Bomb

I’m a huge consumer of music - have been one way or another all my life - and I’m old enough to remember buying music in Vinyl (before it became cool again), cassette tape, CD, MiniDisc (remember that?) and now of course I buy most of it via download sites - MUCH prefering MP3 to the complexities and frustrations that DRM has inevitably brought to the process. So I come with baggage.

The only good thing about DRM (and there’s not room here to talk about all the bad stuff) is the opportunity for subscription services - rental of your content. And Nokia’s offering here is an interesting move ahead on what the likes of Napster and Vodafone (amongst others) already offer: this time the DRM is linked directly to the purchase of the device - so you buy your pay-as-you-go nokia phone, and you can download ‘all you can eat’. Then, 12 months later, the bomb goes off. You need to go out and buy another phone.

Neat trick: Nokia just turned the PAYG market into an annual subscription, of sorts.

D’you think they have people standing outside schools flogging these things?

Personally, Ihave an eclectic mixture of devices: a Sony Walkman music phone, an iPod Touch, a couple of other mp3 players - and I like my stuff to be playable whereever… so I MUCH prefer my music in MP3 format, thank you very much. Thanks to the mix of eMusic, 7Digital and Play.com, *most* of what I want to buy comes through in MP3 (legally!). I’m just waiting for (most of) Universal and for Sony to get with the programme… Come on guys!

Tags: DRM, iphone, iPod Touch, mp3, music, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Walkman