Music Ally

2009 has seen the rise of streaming services Spotify and Pandora (and the fall of several of their rivals); governments grappling with anti-piracy legislation; The Pirate Bay trial – and then its tragicomic sale saga; and hundreds of bright-eyed music start-ups and thousands of iPhone apps. And STILL no Yellow Submarine iPod.

We rounded up the key trends from the year for our final Music Ally Report of 2009, and the article is republished below in full. If you’re interested in our service in 2010, with its daily bulletin and fortnightly analytical report, click here for a free trial.

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Nokia is on the verge of announcing that 10 million songs have been downloaded by Comes With Music users in Brazil, just seven months after it launched there.

It provides more evidence for the notion – accepted by Nokia – that its music service may get more traction in emerging markets where there is less competition from legal services. Figures revealed by Music Ally earlier this year showed that there were 10,809 active CWM users in Brazil in July.

With no update, it’s hard to gauge how many songs the average user there is downloading though.

Nokia has unveiled the latest stage in its marketing campaign for Comes With Music. It’s called ‘Comes With… Riddles’, and will take place entirely on Twitter.

The company is giving away ten 5800 handsets with bundled CWM subscriptions between 22nd and 31st October, with three partners – Rock Sound magazine, London Elektricity and Family Music. Each day, one of the partners will tweet a riddle, with the answer being a band name and track title. The first person to reply to that tweet with the correct answer gets the phone.

The odds are certainly good of bagging a phone: three people entered today’s first round…

Music Ally has been passed details of the global uptake of Nokia’s Comes With Music service, which suggest it is struggling to make headway. As of July, Nokia had just over 107,000 active users of CWM in nine markets around the world.

That’s according to figures sent out by the company to record labels and distributors. In the UK specifically, Nokia had just shy of 33,000 active CWM users in July, up from 23,000 in April.

The full list of markets breaks down as follows (sorted by launch dates):

CWM ACTIVE VOUCHERS– JULY 2009
UK – 32,728  (launch date: Oct 08)
Singapore – 19,318  (Feb 09)
Australia – 23,003  (Mar 09)
Brazil – 10,809  (Apr 09)
Sweden – 1,101  (Apr 09)
Italy – 691  (Apr 09)
Mexico – 16,344  (May 09)
Germany – 2,673  (May 09)
Switzerland – 560  (Jun 09)

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Now this is strange. As someone who signed up for Comes With Music on launch day last year, I’ve been waiting to find out what will happen when my subscription lapses. I just received an email from Nokia telling me… it’s been extended by three months.

“As a big thank you, we have some great news. We’re going to give you more. We are giving you another 90 days of musical freedom at no cost at all: your membership, due to end on 15/10/2009 will be extended until 13/01/2010.”

Which is pretty generous, but does raise the thought that Nokia hasn’t quite locked down the terms for its proposed renewal subscriptions for the service. Earlier this month, Nokia’s EVP of services Niklas Savander told Music Ally that “we have an agreement with labels on the subscription model, for a renewal on a monthly basis”.

Presumably it’ll kick in by mid-January… The full text of the email follows. We’re assuming all the UK customers who signed up at launch are getting this email – if you have or haven’t, post a comment to let us know.

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Earlier this week, reports suggested that Nokia’s Comes With Music US launch has been delayed from this year to 2010 from this year. Is it true? Head of music Liz Schimel says it’s not a delay: “We’ve never announced a specific launch date for the US.”

Which is true, although in a keynote at MidemNet this year, Nokia’s entertainment boss Tero Ojanpera did say that “We are looking at the US also in 2009″. We know, we liveblogged it.

It’s not necessarily a contradiction though. Here’s Schimel again: “We prefer to announce launches at the point when they’re quite imminent. We pick the moment when we have all the optimised conditions, but it’s not a question of a delay.” So, Nokia WAS looking at 2009 for a possible US launch, but has since decided that conditions there are not yet optimal.

Which begs the question, of course, of what those conditions would be. Our hunch: a big operator deal.

What happens when you reach the end of your 12-month Comes With Music contract? It’s a question that’s been asked ever since Nokia launched its unlimited music service in the UK last October.

Nokia always made it clear that users would keep all the music they’d downloaded, but fudged the issue of how they would continue to download new tracks without buying a new Comes With Music device.

Not any more. “We now have a solution to what happens after the first 12 months,” Nokia’s EVP of Services Niklas Savander told Music Ally this morning, at the company’s Nokia World conference in Stuttgart.

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Forbes magazine says it’s been told by Nokia that it will not launch its Comes With Music service in the US until next year, despite having previously targeted a 2009 launch for its unlimited music service.

Its article suggests that the lukewarm response to CWM elsewhere in the world may be responsible, as Nokia regroups to get the product right. “Nokia is learning as they go along,” analyst Paolo Pescatore tells Forbes. “It’s a case of fixing it over time. For the US, they need to make sure the pieces are together before they launch any service.”

The danger is that rival services – from Spotify’s app to any Apple move into the unlimited music space – could beat Nokia to the punch there.

Sorry, you can stop reading now if you don’t like Little Boots, or Nokia, or roller discos. Because if you do, then the Nokia Skate Almighty event in London next month will be right up your street.

It’s all happening at Potter’s Fields near Tower Bridge from 5th to 9th August, with other artists appearing including Calvin Harris and The Rakes. It’ll be open all day for kids and families, before turning into an over-18s roller disco after 6pm. Nokia is getting people to sign up for one-hour slots at its Nokia Music site.

That’s as in people who want to go along, not artists, obviously. Tickets will be sent out as mobile tickets, with people’s phones then scanned on entry. As part of the event, Nokia has kicked off a joint marketing campaign for Comes With Music and Little Boots’ new album, co-inciding with it becoming available on the Nokia Music Store. Nokia has also bagged an exclusive ‘A1 Bassline remix’ of Boots’ new single Remedy.

“Our broad reaching partnership means we’re able to consider all the ways in which we can reach her fan-base and develop activity that combines digital music, live gigs and traditional advertising,” says Noel Penzer, director of business development at Warner Music UK.

We’re getting our skates on now…

Orange UK has announced that from today it will be selling DRM-free music downloads from its online and mobile music stores. As part of that change, it’s also introduced variable pricing – the same concession Apple made on its iTunes Store when that went DRM-free.

Orange has more than 700,000 DRM-free tracks available now, although it’s only signed up two major labels – Universal Music Group and EMI, plus various independents. No Warner Music Group or Sony for now, it seems. Meanwhile, Orange’s music store and overall music portal are being revamped to be easier to navigate around, with more information on events like Orange RockCorps, and handset offers like Nokia’s Comes With Music 5800.

That’s interesting, actually. Orange’s own music store is going DRM-free, but the portal it sits within will be advertising the still un-DRM-free Comes With Music handset. Is there potential for customer confusion there? Anyway, Orange’s director of products, portals and services Paul Jevons is talking up the changes.

“Orange is committed to providing customers with the widest access to music tracks and content. Upgrading the Music Portal and introducing DRM-free music helps customers enjoy music how and when they want. We look forward to enhancing the DRM-free music catalogue over the coming months.”