23 April 2008
Sony BMG has become the second record label to join Nokia's
Comes With Music pre-bundled music service.
Comes With Music announced the first deal with Universal in December 2007, and is expected to be availble on some Nokia handsets from the second half of 2008.
Buyers of selected Nokia phones will get free music on their handsets and PC's for a year. After the first year, they can renew their devices or move to Nokia's subscription-based unlimited-access store. The increasing trend for
18-month mobile contracts may cut across this but Nokia is working hard with its business partners to align business models. The precise business model agreed between Nokia, the music labels, and the telecoms carriers is still not clear, but unconfirmed reports say that Nokia will pay Universal $33.50 for every handset sold with pre-loaded music from the Universal catalogue. This needs too be placed in the context of global digital music sales estimated at around $4bn in 2007.