Social Media & Digital Marketing in Singapore

Event: Nokia Comes With Music Launches In Singapore!

You might remember me being hugely excited about being invited to the Nokia Comes With Music launch a week ago that was held at Velvet Underground at Zouk, and the event didn’t disappoint!

What exactly is Nokia Comes With Music? Well it’s a range of phones (but most notably the Nokia 5800) that literally comes with music in the form of a direct link to Nokia’s music store (either via the phone or your computer), that allows you to download music directly to your device.

Here’s the best part: if you have the phone, your music from the store is free for a year. So essentially you have access to more than 4 million tracks (that usually go for S$2 each), for the price of the phone.

I think this is the huge selling point for the phone for me. One of the reasons why piracy is so rampant is simply because we (at least here in Asia) don’t exactly have alternatives when it comes to getting it legally. Comes With Music totally gets rid of that problem.

If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering what happens after the year is up. Does Nokia lock up all the tracks you downloaded? Well the answer is no. The tracks are yours to keep, and can be played from your computer, but you’ll need a new Comes With Music phone to play them on a mobile device. To some, this may be a catch, but the few people I’ve talked to have said this isn’t a deal breaker. After all, Apple/the iTunes store, also has DRM built in that wouldn’t allow you to play your track on anything other than an iPod. I can’t even play it on anything other than iTunes!

I think the idea of having music just readily available to you at no added cost could be a very, very compelling reason to get this phone. Heck I gave serious thought to getting one just for access to the store. Nokia: C’mon let’s have a yearly access plan straight to the store!

If you’re interested in reading more:

• Tech 65 will give you the technical run down (along with HD videos)
• Ingrid (who Text 100 graciously allowed me to invite along) will tell you more about the event (complete with pictures and videos)
• Tech Goodu will tell you more about the phone as well (apparently it’s priced at $538)
• And finally, Cnet has a list of FAQs that could be quite helpful if you’re looking to make a purchase decision.

Thanks once again to Text 100 for inviting me to this event, because it was a blast!

Edit: Nicole aka Cherrymagazine has her post on the event as well, as does Krisandro! Check them out for alternate views!

Tags: apple, cnet, digital rights management, drm, itunes store, music piracy, nokia, nokia 5800, nokia comes with music, Singapore, tech 65, tech goondu, text 100, velvet underground, zouk