We happened upon ComesWithMusic.org the other day, browsing through incoming links to the Music Ally blog. As the name suggests, it’s a blog entirely devoted to Nokia’s new Comes With Music initiative.
Created using the Blogger.com service, it looks like the work of a keen fan - although conspiracy theorists might suggest that’s how it’s meant to look. Check the lengthy strapline at the top of the blog:
NOKIA COMES WITH MUSIC IS A REVOLUTIONARY NEW WAY TO BUY, DISCOVER AND CONSUME MUSIC. IT BREAKS DOWN ALL THE BARRIERS TO CONSUMPTION AND LEADS YOU TO MUSIC PARADISE. IN ADDITION TO REVEALING THE LATEST NEWS ABOUT COMES WITH MUSIC, WE WILL AIM TO SHARE HINTS, TIPS, AND EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT OPTIMISING YOUR EXPERIENCE OF USING THE SERVICE.
We find it hard to believe Nokia would be trying to do this as a supposedly independent thing - a Whois lookup indicates that the domain name ComesWithMusic.org is registered to UK firm Falcon Internet Limited. Whoever’s behind it, it takes the prize for the most niche digital music blog yet.
One of the things we’re tracking at Music Ally is how artists and labels are using mobile and online to promote music. And since we’re tracking it on an ongoing basis, we thought it was worth rounding up some of the notable campaigns for last month.
Not all are straight digital marketing campaigns – some are more distribution deals – but we think they give a snapshot of what companies are up to. See what you think.
1. AC/DC Excel video (above). Sony BMG turned the new video from the Aussie rockers into an ASCII-art video, embedded into an Excel spreadsheet. The idea: fans would be able to email it round workplaces without fear of getting carpeted by bosses. Watch It
The use of music in games isn’t just about licensing, these days. A new breed of games are exploring the idea of using the music tracks already on the devices on which they’re played (whether PC, console or mobile phone) to ‘auto-generate’ in-game levels or content.
As an example, today I’ve been playing a PC game called Audiosurf, which came out late last month. It’s a PC game that costs £9.99, and is a ‘puzzle racer’. It looks a bit like Wipeout, in that it’s a futuristic-looking 3D racing game, but you have to collect coloured blocks as you zip along the various tracks.
But the interesting thing is the way it uses the music stored on your hard drive to generate unique tracks to race on - with slower tunes creating a gentle uphill ride, and faster songs creating more of a rollercoaster effect. Watch our video hands-on above, and then click below for more info on this, and similar games on other platforms.
Ex Eurythmics man Dave Stewart isn’t a big fan of MySpace, it seems. “Rupert Murdoch bought MySpace, and he bought every kid’s music and video – that’s 1.6 million bands’ songs – and they did’t get a share of anything. There’s something not quite right there,” he said, talking to Music Ally at Nokia’s Games Summit in Rome yesterday.
However, Stewart and Nokia also announced plans for an innovative new mobile game, Dance Fabulous, which will attempt to break a new artist called Cindy Gomez. The game will feature her songs, dance moves and avatar, and potentially will direct gamers off to the Nokia Music Store to buy the tracks too.
Full details will be in our interview in today’s Report, due to be sent out this afternoon.
The rumours were true: 3 UK has become the first mobile operator to cut a deal to offer Nokia’s Comes With Music initiative.
The operator will start selling CWM-enabled N95 8GB handsets on 3 November in the UK, with an 18-month contract for customers, rather than the 12 months of music offered on Carphone Warehouse’s existing pay-as-you-go CWM handset, the 5310 XpressMusic.
Customers will have to sign up to a £35-a-month contract to get 3’s handset, although the operator hasn’t specified whether the handset itself will be free. It’s certainly good news for Nokia, with 3 being the first operator domino to fall for its new initiative. Read the full press release below.
Howzaboutthis for product promotion? Nokia’s new touchscreen music handset, the 5800 `Tube’, apparently makes a prominent cameo appearance in the video for Britney’s Womanizer single.
Not only does a character use the phone to video Britney sitting on a photocopier (?!), but there’s also a scene where someone pulls up the device’s calendar. But here’s the thing that tickled us: the appointment on-screen is for a “product placement meeting”. Cheeky, but admirable.
Meanwhile, the newly-sane Spears is coining it in from digital downloads, according to the latest Nielsen SoundScan figures in the US. Womanizer sold 285,800 downloads in its first week on sale - the best first week for a female artist since Mariah Carey’s Touch My Body earlier this year.
By way of an update to our earlier hands-on, we’ve been digging around Nokia’s Comes With Music service, and have found some rather big bands aren’t on there. To name but three: Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys and Oasis have no albums available to download at all. Oh, and while Radiohead’s EMI back catalogue IS there, ‘In Rainbows’ isn’t.
Given Nokia’s promise that it’s focusing strongly on local bands, this isn’t great. It doesn’t appear to be the result of just focusing on major label albums though - a quick search turned up albums by independent artists like the White Stripes, Mr Scruff, Roots Manuva, British Sea Power and Nightmares On Wax. Archive stuff is patchy though - you can get every White Stripes album from Comes With Music, but only the last two from Roots Manuva.
Nokia will presumably be filling out the Comes With Music catalogue in the coming weeks and months, and we stand by our earlier assertion that the service is slick and easy to use. But the fairly sizeable Franz, Oasis and Monkey-shaped holes may not be what consumers were hoping for.
A quick look at the main features of Comes With Music, and how it ties in with the Nokia Music PC application. For more first impressions, check our earlier post.
Tomorrow sees the launch of Nokia’s Comes With Music service in the UK, via a deal with Carphone Warehouse to sell the first CWM handset, the 5310 XpressMusic. Nokia has lent journalists and bloggers a handset and an early login today, so we’ve been having a poke around.
It requires the installation of the Nokia Music application on your PC - a 65.9MB download - which is essentially Nokia’s version of iTunes, allowing users to manage and play their music library in the same application from which they download new stuff. There’s an option to have it scan your hard drive for DRM-free music you already own.
Right from the start, Nokia has clearly placed a big emphasis on the user interface. There’s a nifty rollover tutorial the first time you launch the application, every element has a pop-up explanation when you hover over it, and there’s lots of drag’n'drop functionality. So how does Comes With Music itself shape up?
Nokia’s Comes With Music service doesn’t launch until 16 October in the UK, but the terms and conditions for it are online already - you can find them here on Carphone Warehouse’s website (the page is the top result when you Google ‘comes with music terms and conditions’).
The bit everyone will be interested in is the section on ‘Abusive Use Policy’:
“Your licence to download Comes With Music Content is limited to your personal non-commercial and reasonable use. If our analysis of your use of the Service suggests abusive or excessive downloading, Nokia may contact you and ask you to moderate your usage. If you fail to comply with such a request, Nokia reserves the right to restrict or terminate your use of the Service.”
In truth, it’s no surprise to see this kind of clause in there. Nokia needs some recourse if a few users start hammering the service to a ridiculous degree. For the vast majority of users, CWM will ‘feel’ unlimited, in that they can download as much as they want.
However, the clause is still likely to cause a stir - particularly on tech blogs. Given the interest in this aspect of CWM, it’s still a bit fuzzy - users won’t know what Nokia defines as ‘excessive’ usage until they’re rapped on the knuckles for it. Then again, if Nokia were to set a specific number of downloads, it would risk creating something of a badge of honour for geeks to aim for.
Some other interesting points:
A user’s 12 or 18-month CWM service period only starts once they activate the service. So if they buy the handset in October but don’t activate CWM till November, it’s from November that the period starts.
The PINs used to register a CWM handset are country-specific. In other words, people outside the UK won’t be able to buy UK 5310 CWM phones on 16 October to use.
You can store CWM downloaded tracks on one mobile and one PC at a time, but you can’t burn them to CD.
There are also more details on how the ‘restoration period’ works after your initial 12 or 18 months, with info on how you can or can’t re-download your songs if you upgrade your PC or mobile.
We happened upon ComesWithMusic.org the other day, browsing through incoming links to the Music Ally blog. As the name suggests, it’s a blog entirely devoted to Nokia’s new Comes With Music initiative.
