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Nokia Music Store and MusicStation launch in the UK
Territories covered
Western Europe
UK,
Asia-Pacific
Australia,
Indonesia,
Malaysia,
New Zealand,
Philippines,
Singapore,
Thailand,
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Published:
02-Nov-07
1 November saw the launch of two mobile music services in the UK: Omnifone's MusicStation and Nokia's Music Store. MusicStation is being launched exclusively with Vodafone on a wide range of 2.5G, 3G and HSDPA handsets available from Vodafone and Phones 4U stores. For a £1.99 weekly subscription added to the mobile phone bill users will have unlimited access to the 1.2m track catalogue. Vodafone users on selected handsets with monthly tariffs over £40 will be offered the service for free. Nokia's Music Store is an a-la-carte model, offering individual tracks for download at £0.80 and albums at £8. Tracks can be downloaded over-the-air or sideloaded onto the mobile device. A PC-only music streaming service is available for £8 per month. Currently the service is only offered on two handsets, the N81 and N95 8GB models. Nokia also recently launched a Music Store in Asia-Pacific called the 'Independent Artists Club' intended to promote local artists to a global audience. Nokia users receive 10 free monthly downloads, whereas users of other handsets only receive 5. This is initially available in Thailand and Singapore, with plans to introduce the service in Malaysia, the Phillipines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand in the following six months. Our take...Over-the-air (OTA) music downloads services have not met with much success in Western markets, with users preferring to side-load music from PC to mobile. MusicStation offers access to unlimited music downloads without the off-putting data charges often associated with downloading content OTA. Vodafone is the first European operator to offer music services bundled into a mobile subscription. It is possible that these factors will encourage the uptake of subscription services in the UK.
The Nokia Music Store has not met with a particularly good reception. Orange, 3 and T-Mobile have all refused to sell the Music Store enabled devices, leaving Vodafone and O2 as the only vendors. Warner Music, the third largest record label, is withholding its music catalogue from Nokia reportedly because of concerns of music being traded illegally through the service. Over-the-air downloads through the Nokia service incur data charges. Screen Digest predicts that it is unlikely that the Nokia service will see a strong uptake given that it has only launched on two devices with two operators in the UK.
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Analyst intelligence & notices
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