Nokia Announces Unlimited Music with 'Comes With Music' Service

Today at the Nokia World event in Amsterdam, Nokia announced its new "Comes With Music" program. While details are a bit thin at this point, the main point is that people that Nokia phones will be offered with a 1 year subscription to the Comes With Music service, which they can access to freely download an unlimited number of tracks from the millions of tracks that the will initially offer.

The best part of the service, however, is that once the year long subscription has expired, users will still get to keep, and play, any tracks that were downloaded during the previous year. Nokia has said that initially the Comes With Music system will offer only tracks published by Universal Music Group, but has stated that it is already in talks with other music publishing houses. For those not familiar with Universal Music Group, it is the publisher for artists such as U2, Johnny Cash, Amy Winehouse, and Maroon 5 - among countless others.

Rob Wells, SVP of Digital at Universal Music Group, told our Ricky Cadden that it, and Universal's artists, are receiving payment for the access that Nokia phone buyers will enjoy. Nokia will add this expense into the cost of Comes With Music handsets, but not all handsets will be sold with the Comes With Music service package. Ricky was also told that the music will include DRM, that tracks will be playable both on the phone and the user's PC, and that music may be transferred to a new device a total of 3 times.

Basically, from what we have been told, the Comes With Music system is just a free one year "all you can eat" subscription to the Nokia Music Store, which is, for the time being, limited only to music from Universal Music Group. As part of the Nokia Music Store, it also means that the Comes With Music program will not be available in markets where the Nokia Music Store does not operate. This means that for the time being, at least, we won't see it here in the United States.