The Nokia Lumia is for music lovers
After calling, messaging and social networking, listening to music is a favorite activity of smartphone owners. The Nokia Lumia is a great choice for those people because we have a bevy of fantastic options for listening to whatever type of music your ears prefer.
Today, we’ll take a look at three of the best options for music fans including Spotify, Nokia Music and Pandora.
Starting off with Nokia Music
Nokia Music is one of the best reasons to buy a Lumia. In fact, we’ll go further than that and say it’s the best free mobile music service available for Windows Phone 8.
That’s a mighty big claim, so let’s run down the reasons we think Nokia Music is so great:
Free: Access to Nokia Music is free and comes preinstalled on your phone (If it’s not, get it here). You can listen to as much music as you like, all day long, and it won’t cost you a penny*.
No login/account: You don’t need to provide any details to start using Nokia Music. Just switch it on and start playing.
No ads: Of course, there are other free music services out there, but you “pay” by listening to adverts. We don’t have them on Nokia Music – it’s a service we created to make our Lumia smartphones an even better choice.
Offline caching: Keep listening even when there’s no signal. You can store up to four Mixes on your Lumia for when you’re travelling or if you rely on WiFi for Internet services.
Use your own music: As well as Mixes from our collection created by the Bristol Musicologists, you can organize and listen to your own MP3s right inside Nokia Music.
Catalogue: We’ve got one of the biggest catalogues of music of any online music service. Much bigger than any of the other free services out there, and growing every day.
Availability: Nokia Music is available in 26 markets across the globe, and that figure increases regularly. There are few services that can match that reach.
*Of course, you can enhance the experience with Nokia Music+, for the low price of €3.99 a month and free 7-day trial, but all the regular functionality is built-in for nothing.
Spotify
Spotify is available for Lumias running Windows Phone 7 and as a beta for Windows Phone 8. Spotify has millions of tracks available to listeners and is known for being a social network for music lovers. Have a playlist you want to share with your friends? Simply tap a few times and the playlist is shared.
Wanting to try something completely new? The Spotify app features a “What’s New” section showing new tracks and albums on the service ready for your listening pleasure. For those who need offline playlists, these are supported too – so you can tap your feet out of cell range.
Spotify is a terrific music app with plenty of variety from all musical genres. Listening to Spotify on your Lumia will require a premium subscription, which is currently priced at $9.95 per month.
Off to Pandora
One of the most recent apps to come out for Nokia Lumia is Pandora, which is a favorite on the Web because of its radio-style playlists.
With Pandora, you enter in a few musicians and the service feeds you a stream of music based off the tastes you specify in your feed. You can “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” tracks and after a period of time, Pandora learns your musical tastes and selects tunes accordingly.
On Windows Phone 8, Pandora is ad-free for 2013. The Pandora app is attractive and gets you to your music straight away. If you’re not sure what you’re in the mood for, Pandora has genre-based playlists to get you streaming in no time.
Unfortunately for those around the globe, Pandora is only available in 3 geographies.
Shazam – it’s magic
While streaming apps are probably the most important tool in your Lumia music kit, some extras can really help enhance the experience.
One recent addition is the latest version of Shazam, an app for recognising and recording the music you hear while you are out and about.
The latest version has now been released with a beautiful new user interface for Windows Phone 8, with Live Tiles, Lock screen wallpapers and a faster recognition service.
It also ties directly into Nokia Music, Xbox Music and YouTube allowing you to buy the music that’s caught your interest on the spot, or find a video.
Wrapping up
For subscribers of Spotify and Pandora and regular users of Shazam, it’s fantastic that these apps are available for Lumia owners. And for those shopping for a music service to use on their Lumia, Nokia Music warrants a trial. With millions of free tracks to stream, offline playlists and curated mixes, it’s a fantastic service.
What music service do you use the most on your Lumia?