UK – The birth of any new service is an intriguing and exciting prospect, and Comes With Music‘s strong debut in the UK is perhaps more intriguing than most. For a couple of reasons.
The concept for Comes With Music might be simple enough to grasp, but in practice it’s an unusual and utterly new proposition that defies traditional models in mobiles and the wider tech landscape – we’re simply not used to this concept of buying hardware and receiving all-you-can-eat content bundled in, such as buying a game console with unlimited games or a DVD player with a never-ending supply of movies on tap, that we can keep forever. The second reason has to do with territory.
Comes With Music has launched on a island (of which I’m a proud native) that is stereotypically, and for most part rightly, famed for its positive yet intelligently suspicious and outlook on all things new, and I like to think the people of the UK are quick to spot a case of the emperor’s new clothes, elephants in the room and any other cliche idioms a mile off. So it’s truly encouraging to see Comes With Music, a fresh faced beast of a service making a strong start and showing signs of being openly accepted as an alternative option to traditional methods of buying content and hardware separately. Mobiletoday.co.uk reported:
“Nokia recorded 150,000 downloads in the UK in the first week Comes With Music went on sale, representing a tenth of the downloads enjoyed by iTunes. The level suggests a strong start for Nokia, although iTunes charges for each individual track, rather than offering unlimited downloads.”
Comes With Music remains an infant service, but perhaps what’s most interesting is that its early adoption shows signs that new models such as this can be pursued and should be investigated, beyond music. It’s something that Tom Erskine, Nokia’s man charged with launching Comes With Music, touched upon in a piece featured in New Media Age, where he mentions games and videos as being open to consideration. Is the Comes With Music service something you think could work in other areas such as these, and do you think it really can work long-term for music? Post your thoughts below.
Photo from Chor Ip