Nokia to roll out music service in India soon

Mumbai: In order to give unlimited music access to its consumers, Nokia plans to launch its music service 'Comes With Music' in India in a couple of months. "To fight piracy we need to develop content that is compelling, innovative, exclusive and subscription models which are almost free," Nokia India's Marketing Director, Vineet Taneja, told PTI.

Consumers can browse, download and sync music either to their computer or directly on to the mobile device. With the launch of the music service, consumers will get access to unlimited music downloads from the Nokia Music Store for a year, Taneja said, adding, "It will offer 3.5- million tracks of all genres, Indian and international labels. This service will be targeted for mid-and-top-end models, starting with 6,000-7,000 handsets. Service will be available in existing and up-coming handsets."

The company has tied-up with independent Indian record labels including T series, Venus, Tips, Big Music, Eros and Indian Music Industry (IMI). Nokia has already launched this service in 26 countries.

"We first launched the music service in the UK in the year 2000 and later ventured into other markets like Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Finland and others. We also have tie-ups with international music labels like Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, EMI and Warner," Taneja said.

"We started this journey of giving music beyond voice and SMS some five-years ago or so," he said. Today every device has music, a low-end handset will at least have FM radio, Taneja said. "The way we define music is the one that has a memory card. Our range in this segment starts from 4,000. In the next few weeks we will launch something that is even cheaper than this."