Nokia Music Store - What’s the Goal?
I was going to answer in the comments of my previous post, but it ended up being too long, so now it’s a post. I’ve closed comments on that post, please continue the discussion here.
I want to talk about the focus of the Nokia Music Store. I know people are upset at the DRM. Nokia was questioned on this, and their answer is that their goal is to bring EVERY song ever made to their store. It’ll obviously be a gradual thing, but the goal is to get as much music as is possible on there. Currently, the only way you’re going to do that is with DRM, so they decided they had to play ball with the recording industry. It stinks, but that’s how it works. If you’re that concerned, don’t buy it from them, just buy the CD and rip it. Done.
Mac Usage - the Music Store itself should work on a Mac just fine. It’s
not a download, it’s a website. It does, currently, only work in
Internet Explorer, which I informed my contact how annoying that is to
their core, which mostly uses Firefox, I would imagine. They said they
may support Firefox in the future. In the meantime, you can just use
the IE Tab extension like I do.
The Nokia Music Player, honestly, COULD potentially run on a Mac. I
don’t use Mac, so I didn’t think to ask the demo person. However, I
will make every effort to get this answered. James @ The Creative Life
Blog mentioned that the big problem was no iPod support. They don’t
NEED iPod support. They have sold more N-series devices in the last
year than iPods have EVER sold, total. Apple uses iTunes to drive iPod
sales, just like Nokia is going to use the Nokia Music Store to drive
(and complete) N-series sales.
Also, pricing is yet to be determined. There were prices in the store
at 80p/song, but I was assured they were not the real prices, but
merely in there as placeholders. In fact, when OPK was questioned about
pricing, he said, "You’ll find out when you buy your first track." So
there you have it. Thus, you can’t really compare the pricing, other
than the fact that it will cost the same to download on your PC as it
will on your mobile, of this I was assured.
So what makes this successful? Is it the number of songs sold? Is it
the number of registered users? You know what I think it is? I think
they’ll be (somehow) measuring the mobile usage. That, in my opinion,
is the goal of the Nokia Music Store. It’s not intended to be another
revenue source. It’s intended to add value to your Nokia N-series
device. I’ve explored long and hard how to best get music on and off of
my N95, and right now, there’s no elegant solution. Nothing to
replicate the iTunes/iPod relationship. From what I’ve seen, this new
Nokia Music Store and Music Player will do that, and more. That’s why
I’m confident.
What do you think the goal of the service is?
You should try “Nokia Multimedia Transfer” on a Mac cuz it does a pretty phenomenal job of syncing all your music and photos through iTunes and iPhoto.
Since you don’t own a Mac (yet) guess you’ll just have to got to an Apple Store or a friend’s house and try it out yourself!
FYI, the Windows version of iTunes allows you to convert WMA to AAC or MP3 with little to no hassle (it doesn’t support WMA+DRM however.)
Its tough to compare an Nseries device with an iPod since most of them aren’t designed to realistically replace iPods (N81 is the first Nseries device that comes “close”.)
To say that Nokia doesn’t need iPod support is pretty naive since Apple has basically pioneered the Digital Online Music Industry (as far as legal sales of digital music files go)
on their own and most consumers of legal digital music tracks own iPods (whether they purchase their content through eMusic or iTunes Store or rip their own CDs!)
Why can’t Nokia follow Apple’s example and sell both +DRM and DRM Free content?
I am curious though.. This is obviously a regional launch Euro first where unlimited data plans are not the standard and you expect it will take off with paying xx.xx per song on top of racking up ridiculous data charges? And in the US, VZW, Sprint and Cingular all have online music offerings (VZW/Sprint OTA) and they are awful.. no one wants them. Almost no one uses them. Perhaps this will be different but I highly doubt it.. At least not until they release CDMA N series devices. ATT’s 3g foot print is waaaaay to small and not a soul would be the least bit happy with downloading OTA over EDGE. I think your optimism is perhaps rooted in your heart rather than your head.