We reported in November last year that Nokia would go live with their music store in December 2008. The result of that was the Nokia Music Store. Somewhat like iTunes, Nokia’s software allows you to purchase music from the big four labels and a bunch of Indian labels like T-Series, Big Music and Yashraj. While not entirely live yet (you can’t buy tracks right now unless you have a Nokia voucher, which you can’t buy), the store will become the first major digital distributor of music in India.
Radioandmusic reports that Nokia will now go live with the service “by the end of this year” through Comes With Music. Consumers who buy Comes With Music phones will get unlimited music downloads through the store for a year. No word yet on whether these downloads will be DRM free, or on how unlimited is unlimited.
Regardless, if priced and marketed right, Nokia will be at the head of digital music distribution in one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world. Which is incredible if one considers that this is the year 2009 and the second biggest consumer market in the world, one facing decreasing CD sales and increasing FM airplay, still doesn’t have digital music retail. Like radio, have we leapfrogged the need for this as well? We think otherwise.
Nokia’s already got a bunch of Indian bands including Swarathma and Advaita (both via EMI we assume) on board. Your move iTunes.
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[...] launched its music store (our early impressions) at the conference, with a tacky song and dance sequence [...]
[...] Hungama’s new entertainment store went live beta recently. Neeraj Roy and Co have had this in the works for a while, but most of what it’s about has been hush-hush. Roy didn’t talk much about it at the Nokia Music Connects conference in Mumbai last month that he was a panelist at, even as Nokia unveiled its own music store. [...]