Music Ally

16.40: I’m sat here in the Koko venue in Camden for Nokia’s Remix event. Suitably uplifting dubby-trance music is playing, the bar is a hubbub of journalists drinking as much free champers as possible before having to sit down, and there are lots of Nokia people looking slightly nervous. Possibly because they’re getting the bar bill.

Yes, it’s Nokia Remix, the event at which Nokia will (hopefully) announce the final details of its Comes With Music rollout in the UK, although strong rumours suggest they’ll also show off their new ‘Tube’ phone for the first time too. It’s all due to kick off at 5pm, and assuming my HSDPA dongle doesn’t catch on fire, I’ll be liveblogging it.

Stay tuned. Oh, and this post will be updated in chronological order, so you’ll need to click the link underneath and keep refreshing to get updates. Assuming that’s what you’re doing, of course.

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Earlier this week, Nokia announced its launch plans for Comes With Music, with the 5310 XpressMusic handset due to go on sale through Carphone Warehouse in the UK next month. The fact that the phone was on a pay-as-you-go contract, with users responsible for all data charges, made us wonder what this would mean for over-the-air downloads.

Well, there’s a simple answer for that: users won’t be able to do them. Nokia has confirmed to Music Ally that the 5310 WON’T support OTA downloads for Comes With Music - meaning users will have to download and sync tracks via their PCs instead. Therefore, Nokia will be pitching the service as a PC-based one, at least in this first iteration, until more handsets are available.

Simon Ainslie, MD of Nokia UK, tells us that the company has “agreed ways of working with most of the operators, and contracts [are] in place”, although he’s not saying who just yet. But he’s bullish. “This is not a test, it’s the full launch. We’re going to be very loud and very big about it as we head into the Christmas period.”

The full article is in this week’s issue of the Music Ally Report, where we get an operator’s take on Comes With Music, and investigate whether it can compete with Apple’s iPhone in the hype wars.

After partnering with Sky last month to create a music download service, Universal’s Rob Wells predicted that “bundling it in with their broadband or set-top box subscription will be an inevitability.” But what of Playlouder MSP, the independent that for five years has been pioneering the notion of licensed filesharing bundled with ISP subscriptions? (more…)

Shock horror, but nowadays it’s just not as fashionable simply to blame the labels for not “getting the internet”. So, as part of a series of regular features Music Ally will over the next few issues spotlight some leading North American managers to get their views on how the labels are learning to deal with the challenges of digital. (more…)