Andre Yoskowitz
8 Apr 2010 12:42
Nokia has announced the launch of their Comes With Music service in China this week, offering a DRM-free subscription model for those with Nokia handsets.
At launch, the service will be supported on these phones: The Nokia X6 32GB and Nokia X6 16GB, Nokia 5230, Nokia 5330, Nokia 5800w, Nokia 6700s, Nokia E52 and Nokia E72i.
"It’s not an operator-based offering, it’s a retail-based offering. Consumers can walk into those 80,000 stores, buy the Nokia handset and activate Comes With Music," says Nokia’s director of global music Adam Mirabella, via Music Ally.
The company says the catalog will be 50 percent "local repertoire."
China is infamous for its high piracy rates, but Mirabella says going DRM-free, among other things, should win over some fans: "People will be getting all the metadata and album art, good clean files authorised by the music companies, the highest quality files and something that's virus-free. This marketplace is begging for a legal opportunity. The music companies, publishing companies and artists have not really been able to generate any revenue in this marketplace. They're all looking for somebody with a strong footprint and presence, to see if there’s something they can do to build the business back."