Is Comes With Music The Worst Idea In The World?

All you can listen to, including Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell! Comes With Music is here and it's time to bring out the Cassandras and explain why it's such a bad idea. We don't have any Cassandra's to hand though, so Ewan will have to suffice.

Comes With Music is here! Announced today alongside Nokia's Remix London event, it's either 'the future of music today' (Nokia's view) or 'what a silly stupid idea that will never work except to destroy Nokia' (pretty much anyone in America). As with most endeavours, the truth is somewhere in between... which I'm sure most will agree with.

Right then, let's start out by putting on our 'nasty' hat and see how many holes we can poke in this strategy. After all, that's what pretty much every tech web site is going to do in the near future. So with that it's over to Mr Angry (shown here in italics) to discuss what's wrong about Comes with Music.

First up it's the evil question of DRM - Nokia have chosen a system that forces you to keep the same mobile phone and and PC combination for the whole year of your subscription! That's terrible! How many people are going to buy a new phone in a year and lose all their music? And keep the same laptop or desktop for all their music? This is just a silly restriction!

I don't think many people will swap their phone within a year, especially if they buy their new Comes With Music on a 12-18 month contract. I'll partially give you the desktop PC one, although again I think the number of swaps in a year is minimal. Besides there is a mechanism to change your PC or mobile, and I'm sure, as with N-Gage, customer support will be sensible.

After a year I'll want to move the music... DRM won't let you.

Just to counter this one, as I'm sure this will be written online many times; after the year is up, you can switch handsets and PCs with the DRM system - our information is that you can do this once every 90 days (3 months). Of course, like any Windows DRM store, if Nokia 'switch off' the servers then you won't be able authorise any change of device, leaving you with the hardware you're on at the switch on. This has happened with other DRM stores so is a consideration, but to be honest, given Nokia's size, I think when this happens it will be many years down the line.

Where's the music I want? I don't just want the latest teeny bopper hits from the big labels - I want my classic rock, my jazz, and my obscure songs by The Wurzels. Stop telling me what I like! I already know...

There's no clear number on the amount of tracks in Nokia's Music Store, but estimates of three million separate tracks will probably be about right. That's a lot of music, and yes, because of the organisation of the music industry, the majority of these will be with the big four music labels. Nokia have said independent labels will be along as well, and there are a number of umbrella organisations that allow some collective negotiation to help out here.

Yes, there will be a bias towards big commercial music. So what? You're not forced to buy anything by Steps. A browse through the Music Store shows a rather diverse collection is behind the Top Ten: Marty Feldman's Eurovision song anyone, at least 20 versions of Camille Saint Sens Danse Macabre, or Scottish folk legend Jimmy Shand? I'm pretty sure you'll find something you like.

Still nothing from The Beatles though.

It's worth pointing out that all of these arguments, and the others that are going to appear online over the next few days are actually valid. They're valid for pretty much any digital music store online. Mashable summed up their thoughts on the Nokia Music Store quite well last year...

Let me quickly repeat all that. It's a music store that won't work in most browsers (only MSIE), doesn't support any OS other than Windows, sells DRM-protected music (and a poor choice of it, too), and only in specific regions?

Makes it sound quite bad, doesn't it? What happens if we were to write with the same venom about the iTunes music store?

Let me quickly repeat all that. It's a music store that only works with it's own proprietary software (and only plays on one specific brand of consumer device), supports no Operating System other than the latest versions or Windows or MacOS, sells DRM-protected music (and a poor choice of it, too), and only within regional stores?

Sounds familiar, doesn't it. You see, take away the window dressing, the brand names, and the bias inherent in every web site (even though we all deny it) and the simple fact is that this is how the music publishers want online music to work. You play by the rules or you move to Russia get out of the game.

Nokia's Music Store works with the same rules as all the other stores, but their Comes With Music offer is something that is genuinely disruptive and breaks the mould as much as it can within the strict guidelines the music labels impose. And it's going to be costing Nokia something. Visit any web site and you'll get a different guess as to how much Nokia is paying each label, and how much of a mix it is in terms of flat-fee for the year and a per track cost basis.

I'm hoping that Nokia have got some fire-breaks in there (i.e. their maximum payout to the record labels has a theoretical limit) because if this has been negotiated badly, or there's some gotcha that's only discovered when hundreds of thousands of people all start downloading 50 to 60 tracks every day (that's only a few albums each), then this sort of miscalculation could be very painful (for more on this read up on the Hoover Free Flights fiasco in the 1990's).

Put the geeks, bloggers and tech pundits aside for the moment. What does a consumer see when deciding on a Comes with Music handset? Free music for a year for a little bit more on the price of the handset. In many cases that's going to be enough to clinch a sale in the Nokia column as opposed to any other device.

Nokia don't need to turn an actual profit in the Music Store. Much as Apple don't make megabucks out of the iTunes store, the value is in increased hardware sales. It's about bringing people into your platform and giving them sticky reasons to stay there. It's no mistake that Music is one of the main branches of Ovi.

The disruptive effect of Comes with Music will help Nokia, in the eyes of many, make the turn from just a hardware company to one that offers hardware, software and services. And after a year of associating your Nokia phone with music, the customer retention by Nokia is going to be very interesting to see.

No it's not perfect, but Comes with Music is trying something new. Isn't that exactly what we want companies to be doing? I for one welcome our 'infinite music' overlords. Or at least I will when I pick up a handset...

-- Ewan Spence, October 2008

Published by Ewan Spence at 11:38 UTC, October 2nd 2008

Categories: Comment
Platforms: S60 3rd Edition

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