Nokia nabs Warner for its future Internet music service

By Jacqueline Emigh | Published July 1, 2008, 11:18 AM

Apple's iTunes and Microsoft's Zune stand to face newfound competition later this year from Nokia's Comes with Music, especially if Nokia manages to nail down EMI, too.

In a deal inked with Warner Music this week, Nokia has now signed three of the four major record companies to "Comes with Music," an offering that will package a mobile phone with one year of unlimited access to music, allowing users to keep the downloaded tunes once the subscription is up.

Nokia first launched Comes with Music in December, with Universal as its initial partner. Sony BMG then signed on in April. Now, EMI is the only major record company not yet on board.

Posing rivalry to both Apple's iTunes and Microsoft's Zune, Comes with Music is emerging as one of several elements of a strategy Nokia has been articulating around converting the phone manufacturer into "more like an Internet company."

Nokia's new music service is slated to launch in the second half of this year on "a range of Nokia devices in selected territories," according to a statement from Nokia this morning. Users will be able to swap music between a phone and Nokia software running on a PC. The tunes, however, will reportedly be governed by Microsoft's PlayForSure DRM.

After a 12-month subscription to Comes with Music has run out, the user will need to either buy a new phone or pay to renew the subscription and keep downloading music from Nokia's online store. However, music already downloaded will stay playable even if the subscription isn't renewed.

Over the past year or so, Nokia has also rolled out Internet-oriented products and services such as the Ovi online photo-sharing service, a Flickr-like application called Share Online, Nokia Maps, and Nokia's Internet Radio.

Now, as some see it, Nokia's purchase of mobile OS producer Symbian last week -- and its formation of the Symbian Foundation -- constitute Nokia's answers to Google's "device agnostic" Android software platform and Open Handset Alliance (OHA).

"Our goal is to act less like a traditional manufacturer, and more like an Internet company. Companies such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft are not our traditional competitors, but they are major forces that must be reckoned with," said Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, speaking at his company's annual meeting in May.

View comments by with a score of at least

PDC 2009: What have we learned this week?

There was the freebie that no one will forget, the heebie-jeebies courtesy of Scott Guthrie, and a teensy bit clearer picture of how this cloud thingie should work.

Live report: Will Google Chrome OS change Linux?

The mysteries of just what Chrome OS is, and how much of an operating system it truly is, may be resolved today.

PDC 2009: Microsoft cares about Web browser performance

The effort to give users of the world's dominant Web browser the impression of quality, is a personal one for the man who leads that battle.

Nokia re-affirms its commitment to Symbian, sort of

Maemo won't necessarily be replacing Symbian in the Nokia N-Series, but that's definitely a place where it will be found.

E-book readers will be in short supply this holiday season

E-readers are hot this year, and a lot of compelling new products have been released, but are there enough electrophoretic displays to go around?

Sony looks to finally open a single storefront for downloads

Sony has had many different download portals for movies, music, e-books, and games, and now it's looking to make a single shop for all of it.

Tuning out the tablet: Time to give the endless speculation a rest

Wide Angle Zoom: Wishing and hoping and thinking and praying....won't put an iTablet on the market.

Five improvements for IT managers in 2010

If businesses are to improve their efficiency for next year, they need to stop and reassess the basic tenets of their job.

AOL's spinoff from Time Warner to shed 2,500 jobs

As AOL moves toward become an independent company again, it will cut nearly a third of its workforce.

Gartner: SMS-based money transfer will be bigger than mobile browsing, search

Gartner issues its predictions for the 10 things our phones will be doing in 2012.

Don't forget to upgrade to Firefox 3.6 beta 3 today

Mozilla has released the latest beta its Firefox 3.6 browser software, just over one week after beta 2.