Comes With Music: Jupiter Research’s take

The reactions are coming in from yesterday's announcement by Nokia of more Comes With Music details. Jupiter Research analyst Mark Mulligan has chipped in with his views, which are largely positive – calling it “a great, innovative and exciting development, probably the single most important thing to happen to the music industry for some time, in concept at least.”But… Actually, there's two buts. Mulligan expresses shock that Nokia only announced plans for 12 and 18-month contracts for Comes With Music, but no 24-month subscriptions (the length of some mobile contracts nowadays).”There is no current provision to provide consumers the ability to pay for continuation of the service,” he says. “This is a shock and a big missed opportunity if it doesn’t transpire. All I can assume is that they haven’t yet agreed on terms with the labels and that they want to assess year 1 adoption and usage to give them extra leverage in licensing discussions.”He also expresses concern that Comes With Music might teach younger consumers that music should be free even from legitimate sources, even if Nokia labours the point that it's not 'free'. “Nokia and the broader industry will need to develop some sophisticated consumer life cycle [...]