Universal Music Group gives more details on Nokia's 'Comes With Music' service

nokia-world.pngThe talk of today’s Nokia World Show is ‘Comes With Music’, the freshly announced partnership between Nokia and Universal Music Group, which will be a subscription based music download service.

Rob Wells, senior vice president for digital at UMG, got up on stage this afternoon to explain the thinking behind the deal, and gave some more details.

Nokia launches Come With Music unlimited download service

nokia-world.pngIf you read my Digital Music Trends post yesterday, you’ll know about Total Music, an idea cooked up by major label Universal Music Group that involved mobile handset manufacturers and MP3 player makers paying a monthly subscription to the labels, to give their users free, unlimited music downloads.

Well, Nokia’s gone and done it. At least, I think they have.

Nokia boss: “Expect us to take more risks”

nokia-world.pngNokia chief Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo kicked off this year’s Nokia World conference, on a whopping 47-metre-wide stage that over the next couple of days will hopefully see at least one speaker do a Mick Jagger and prance its length while hollering into a radio mic. Steve Ballmer would love it.

Anyway, Kallasvuo was on stage to talk Big Picture stuff, explaining Nokia’s overall strategy and vision. And cor, Kallasvuo mentioned the iPhone (by name) within a couple of minutes of taking the stage. He’s feeling confident, then, buoyed by Nokia’s prediction that there’ll be 3.2 billion mobile subscribers by the end of this year.

30 Trends in Digital Music: 6-10

Led_Zeppelin.jpgIt’s time for the second in our series of posts looking at the big trends in digital music – an area that Tech Digest has been covering more and more this year. Today’s set of five include choose-your-own pricing, USB music sticks, record labels taking on iTunes, gnarly old bands getting webby, and the potential of Joost and online TV for music.

30 Trends in Digital Music: 1-5

verbatim-vinyl.jpgThe world of digital music is an exciting place, whether you’re a record label, a band or a music fan. 2007 has seen huge amounts of activity, including DRM-free downloads, social network widgets, the rise of mobile music, Radiohead’s choose-your-own-price album, recommendation services, personal online radio, video karaoke sites, and the first trials of free music funded by advertising.