Will You Stream Or Download Your Mobile Music?

mikp writes "In a David-and-Goliath style fight, small music companies are battling it out with established behemoths to see who can own the future of mobile music. Spotify, the Europe-based music streaming company, is about to launch its iPhone app and has plans to develop it for other mobile platforms soon. In a preview, Spotify shows how you can cache songs to your iPhone so that you don't always need a connection but the songs don't remain on your iPhone permanently. Nokia, on the other hand, has just announced two more music phones that will feature Comes With Music, an unlimited music-download service that involves a one time fee, which is part of the price of the CWM phone, and lets you download music for free (and you get to keep it) for a year. The question remains, are people more likely to stream or download music on their mobile phones?"

Neither

[oldspewey]

I'd rather buy music on physical CDs, rip it to my hard drive, and then load and play it on the device(s) of my choosing.

But then I'm old-school that way.

ComesWithMusic ... Not in the U.S. It Don't

[eldavojohn]

Nokia, on the other hand, has just announced two more music phones that will feature Comes With Music, an unlimited music-download service that involves a one time fee, which is part of the price of the CMW phone, and lets you download music for free (and you get to keep it) for a year.

Am I the only person that went to the CWM page and slid the "Please Select Your Location" bar up and down for about 5 minutes? The United States of America does not appear to be on the list. Is this music going to be restricted by what region you live in? Because when I click UK they say they asked the best in the music industry to sign a deal with them and they all said yes ... are they talking UK only? How did they handle royalties and copyright fees? Is that why there's no US?

Re:ComesWithMusic ... Not in the U.S. It Don't

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not the only one, looks like CNET did too :-)

"Comes with Music not coming to U.S. in 2009"
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13526_3-10323257-27.html

Re:ComesWithMusic ... Not in the U.S. It Don't

[amicusNYCL]

Am I the only person that went to the CWM page and slid the "Please Select Your Location" bar up and down for about 5 minutes?

Dude, there's only 10 items in the list, and they're alphabetized. Did you read each one for 30 seconds to see if it said "United States"? If you click on "Can't Find Your Location" you go to the regular Nokia store where there's another location dropdown with more options, but still no US. It also has a section titled "Available In These Countries", still no US. There's also a box to enter your email to get notified when the store becomes available in another country (the US is listed in that box).

So yeah, there's no US support. They don't bother to explain why.

Re:Technological breakthrough that I missed?

[greyhueofdoubt]

In my car and in my house, my computer or phone get plugged into real speakers. While the little speakers on the phone might be lacking in fidelity, the codec is just fine and decent-quality mp3's or m4a's sound great played over a system.

When I can wear a quality set of headphones, I use them. They sound great.

And yes, every now and then I want a little music while I'm gardening or working in the garage, and the iphone's speakers are good enough that I can set the phone down and hear the music just fine. It's like the little world-band radio that I used to use but now I get to choose my own music.

And I do stream music, and it sounds surprisingly good.

But then, I've always been the kind of person who listens to the *music* and not the *speakers*.

-b

Re:Technological breakthrough that I missed?

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed the 3.5 mm headphone jack? You should try it, it's great! Plug in a pair of Sennheisers or Kosses, or just straight into your home stereo.

But if you cannot tell the tiny phone speaker from earbuds, I'm not sure if you'd notice any difference anyway...

Re:Mu. Yes and no are both right and wrong.

[Tackhead]

you didn't even bother reading the part you quoted, did you?

Yeah - I'm so used to marketspeak that I parsed it as "...and you get to keep it for a year".

Guilty as charged -- but the actual Australia FAQ [comeswithmusic.com], it's even more restrictive. (Why Australia? Because there are only a few countries there, the US isn't one of them, and unlike the UK, its FAQ "written" in Flash.)

First off, there's that. Geographical lock-in. I presume my music will work if I "download" it in Australia and then go on vacation to the States, but who knows? Given that the FAQs are written in HTML and the FAQ for the UK is written in Flash... who knows what the terms are from one country to the next?

How can I use the music once I've downloaded it?
The music can be used on one registered PC and your Comes With Music handset.

Umm, "registered" PC? Sets my DRM detector on "Danger". We've seen this business model a thousand times before.

What happens to my music once Comes With Music service expires?
You can keep all the tracks your have downloaded and listen to them on your registered PC and Comes With Music handset.
However, you will be required to purchase any new music using the standard a la carte store at $1.70 per track.

So, after my service expires, I'm locked into a vendor who charges almost twice as much as the competitor.

That's an improvement from the Singapore FAQ [comeswithmusic.com], in which, after the term expires, I can't buy any more music, period. WTF? To get a new song, I throw the phone away, buy a new phone, renew the contract, and hope that the offer's still in effect?

What happens if I lose my Comes With Music device?
Your music is safe. Our customer care line will help you register to a new Comes With Music device and you'll be able to access all the music you had previously downloaded. You can contact Nokia Care on [...]

At least, until the licensing terms change a few years down the road, or when the vendor stops offering new content, which has happened with every other DRM-based download service.

So yes - I misparsed the marketingspeak behind the first offer. But the fine print behind the actual offer is just as bad.

What's the difference?

[Hurricane78]

They are both downloads. the only difference that with one, it stays longer on the computer. So the question should be: "How long do you (want to) keep your music?". Which of course is dependent on the music itself.

I listen to Shoutcast radios, for which I happen to have made a StreamRipper extension to decide to only keep what I want to keep, before or after I listened to it. With remote control, and Amarok integration. It's working well for me, but feel free to do with it whatever you like: http://navid.radiantempire.com/pub/armSR4amarok&listen.stream.tar.bz2 [radiantempire.com]
The only rule — apart from the GPL license — is, to tell me when you improved it, or found a bug. :)
(There. That is the power of Linux! Have an idea? Let it grow! Let it grow around you. Yeah, that should be the Linux slogan: "Linux: Let your ideas grow!" Or something alike. :)

Re:spotify

[icegreentea]

Spotify is working on North American licensing rights. It's the same up here in Canada. Basically, our licensing is sufficiently different from European models and such that its just extra work that takes more time. Their a Europe based service, makes sense Europe gets all their shit first.

Of course, you can spoof it's location detection right now by using a UK (or other suitable) based proxy.

And don't bitch about it. Fucking Hulu still hasn't reached Canada. And I can't watch all of Colbert Report and Daily Show on their websites either.