Music Ally

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.”

Nokia is the latest digital music company to reveal the booming popularity of Michael Jackson songs since the star’s death a couple of weeks ago.

Globally, seven of the ten top downloaded songs by Comes With Music users last week were by Michael Jackson, according to figures shared with Music Ally by Nokia. He also accounted for nine of the top ten albums.

In fact, one third of all CWM customers downloaded at least one Jacko track last week, with Billie Jean the most popular, followed by Beat It. Jackson jumped from the 21st most popular artist on CWM globally before his death, to first place now.

It’s very much a global thing, too. In Mexico, 25% of all CWM downloads last week were Jackson tracks, while in Brazil, he accounted for 25 of the top 40 downloads. Meanwhile, downloads of Jacko songs increased tenfold in the United Arab Emirates.

Users might be able to keep all the songs they download from Nokia’s Comes With Music service, but its DRM means they can’t be played on other devices or burned to CDs. It seems this may change, though, judging by a report on industry site Mobile Entertainment.

The story claims that at last night’s UK launch of the N97 handset, Nokia said it will remove DRM from its Nokia Music Store by the end of 2009, and is aiming to make Comes With Music MP3-only in 2010 to boot. It would be a logical move, given the announcement this week of Virgin Media and UMG’s unlimited music service, which is DRM-free.

ME also says Nokia has hit back against claims that Comes With Music is performing poorly, and has confirmed that “60% of all CWM device owners in the UK, and over 70% in Mexico, activate the unlimited track service”. Although we have to say, why on earth haven’t the other 40% / 30% done it, given that it’s the raison d’etre of the phone they’ve bought?

Has partnering with an operator and finally launching a Comes With Music enabled 5800 XpressMusic handset reinvigorated Nokia’s unlimited music offer in the UK? Er… Not according to retailers canvassed by trade mag Mobile.

In fact, it claims that many Orange and Carphone Warehouse stores “failed to register a single sale” of the device in its first weekend on sale. Specifically, the report says that Phones 4U sold eight of the devices across its 450 stores on its first day on sale.

Retail staff have criticised the tariffs being offered with the device, particularly the monthly data available for over-the-air downloads, as well as the lack of an unlimited texts option.

Acording to recent figures from IFPI, with digital sales worth USD $ 30 million, Brazil is now the tenth largest digital music market in the world. Historically and following the regional trend, it’s a market dominated by mobile, which contributes to 80% of the record companies’ income. It is not difficult to understand why Nokia chose this market to launch its CWM service. Have they learned the lessons of their lacklustre launch in the UK; and could Brazil become the first big success for CWM? We spoke with Andy Harley, the music manager of Nokia Brasil and this is what he told us.

What were the lessons learned from the CWM launch in the UK?

We learnt many things from the UK launch, as well as all the other launches so far (Singapore, Australia, Italy, Sweden). This knowledge continues to aggregate as we roll out in different territories. The principle lesson we learnt is the importance of the device combo. You need a fantastic device with a fantastic service – that’s the complete solution the consumer demands. And that’s what we have achieved in Brazil with the 5800 Comes With Music offer. (more…)

Nokia has announced Orange as a UK mobile operator partner for its Comes With Music Service; together the two companies will launch Comes With Music exclusively for Orange customers on the Nokia 5800 phone.

Orange will be the only UK network to offer the service, marketing it through five plans ranging from £25 a month for 200 minutes, 300 texts and unlimited music to £45 a month for 1200 minutes, 500 texts and unlimited music.

Nokia (which in a previous Music Ally blog article refused to confirm rumours that Comes With Music has picked up 23,000 UK users)  has arguably suffered through its association in the UK thus far with pay-as-you-go, so the ability for the service to be subsidised through a contract should raise Nokia’s game. Price-wise, however, it’s no iPhone killer: Over-the-air downloading of tracks will be possible, though only “at standard mobile data prices”, meaning no iPhone-like unlimited data tariff for now.

Update…..

Nokia’s PR firm LexisPR contacted us this morning to ask that we clarify the statement that “Orange will be the only UK network to offer the service.” In fact Orange will be the only UK network to offer the 5800 phone, but Comes With Music will also be available to contract customers on 3’s UK network.

In fairness, Nokia’s own press release this morning stated “Starting at under £25 per month, Orange will be the only UK network to offer the service and will do so across five ‘Comes with Music’ price plans.” so we can be forgiven for being slightly confused. And ultimately it’s – in part – the small print and confusing messages which have helped to keep CWM handsets on the shelves so far.

One of the major advantages of the new partnership with Orange’s scale is that the pair of them should be able to double the marketing around Comes With Music and move away from the strange stripy line campaign. Now, how to explain the data tariff issues…

We recently revealed that Nokia’s Comes With Music service has only attracted 23,000 subscribers in the UK, and 4,500 subscribers in Singapore. Nokia then contacted us with some more figures, which gave a more positive spin to its music service highlighting, for example, that new Comes With Music users download an average (more…)

Yesterday, we reported that Nokia’s Comes With Music service has 23,000 active users in the UK – a claim subsequently discussed at the Association of Independent Music’s London conference, and backed up by label sources at the event.

Naturally, we asked Nokia if it could officially confirm the figures, and while the response was an unsurprising ‘no’, the company has revealed to Music Ally some other stats about its unlimited music service.

“While we don’t have specific numbers to share, we have been very pleased with the Comes With Music launches around the world,” a spokesperson tells us.

“It always takes time for new services to gain traction in the market and we’re confident that consumers who purchase Comes With Music are very satisfied with the service. We’ve seen a lot of promising trends that show Comes With Music is helping to expand the digital music industry for everyone, including labels, artists and publishers.”

And those promising trends are…

• (more…)

During the announcement of its financial results last week, Nokia talked up sales of its flagship 5800 XpressMusic handset, which is apparently shipping a million units a month.

The implication was that this is good news for Comes With Music, for which the 5800 XpressMusic is a launch phone in most markets. However, it’s NOT a CWM handset in the UK, which may be one of the reasons why take-up of the unlimited music service has been slower than expected.

We’ve been hearing anecdotal evidence of this for some time, although Nokia hasn’t released any sales figures for Comes With Music handsets in the UK. However, Music Ally has seen data which suggests that CWM has just over 23,000 active users in the UK. Given the high-profile marketing campaign around its launch with retailer Carphone Warehouse, that’s a sluggish start.

However, it should be noted that elsewhere in the world, CWM is having more of an impact – in its quarterly results announcement last week, Nokia said that millions of tracks have been downloaded so far, and that in Singapore specifically, CWM is on track to increase the value of the digital music download market by around 30%.

The 23,000 figure is being discussed at today’s Music Connected 09 conference in London, organised by AIM.

Nokia has announced that it will launch Comes With Music in Italy, Sweden and Mexico in the “coming several months”, following its existing rollouts in the UK and Singapore, and its launch later this month in Australia.

The company has also announced three new music phones in its XpressMusic range: the 5730, 5330 and 5030. The first two of those will be Comes With Music handsets in selected markets.

Meanwhile, Nokia also revealed that the Mexican Nokia Music Store launches today, with Portugal, Norway and South Africa launching “in the coming months”.