LAS VEGAS—Nokia isn’t one to wait for carriers to get on the bandwagon before it makes a move. Sometimes the moves are subtle; other times, highly visible.
A good portion of yesterday’s Mobile Entertainment Live keynote with Tero Ojanpera, executive vice president/entertainment & communications at Nokia, was devoted to Comes with Music, an offering that Nokia unveiled at the Nokia World conference in Amsterdam last year. Comes with Music will enable people to buy a Nokia device with a year of unlimited access to “millions” of tracks. Once the year is up, customers can keep their music.
Nokia announced the service in December with Universal Music Group International; Ojanpera said Nokia is making “good progress” in discussions with other labels, big and small. “It’s important that it needs to be sustainable” as a business, with revenues to be shared, he said.
Nokia is just finalizing the device range and the markets in which it will launch with Comes with Music, he said.
Nokia also is involved in a Green Room project in the United Kingdom whereby a film crew hangs out with a band, for example, in the green room; it will run as a weekly show. Tied to that will be artist promotions in the Nokia Music Store.
Musician/producer Dave Stewart is on Nokia’s artists’ advisory council.
Ojanpera also discussed Ovi, the Internet services environment named after the Finnish word for “door.” The intent is to enable easy access, or a gateway, to consumers’ existing social network and content, combining the mobile, PC and Web worlds.
