Nokia - Comes with music

It's no secret that Nokia has been trying to figure out a way to beat the iPhone and iTunes music store for ages, with no luck so far. But now they are offering a *revolutionary* new way which just might work.

Here's the deal, have as much music as you like for free.

Not bad, and surely the aggressive tactic that is needed. And it's music that you want and have heard of, those providing their cataloguse are EMI - the biggest music label, and a tremendous selection of independent music, courtesy of deals with The Orchard (NASD: ORCD), Beggars Group, IODA, the Ministry of Sound, PIAS and Pinnacle. These companies join Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group in supporting Comes With Music. Nokia has also secured music publishing rights from CELAS on behalf of EMI Music Publishing, GEMA on behalf of Sony/ATV Music Publishing, SACEM on behalf of Universal Music Publishing, as well as the MCPS-PRS Alliance.

So with a roster like that you should be able to find just about anything you like. What's the catch? Well there's obviously no such thing as a free lunch, but this is cheap -Comes With Music offers one year of unlimited access to the entire Nokia Music Store catalogue and customers can keep all the music that they have downloaded at the end of the year to continue enjoying their music collection.

Comes With Music will be available across a range of Nokia devices, including the new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic - also announced today and the Nokia N95 8GB and Nokia 5310 XpressMusic.

The United Kingdom will be the first market to offer Comes With Music with sales starting now and the United States sales are planned for 2009. The Nokia 5310 XpressMusic Comes With Music edition is expected to cost GBP 129.95 and people can pre-register their orders for Comes With Music devices from Carphone Warehouse .

I've done a search on the website and the store really does have everything - Bright Eyes, Bon Iver, Fleet Foxes, Wilco, Ryan Adams, iron and wine.

This might just be enough to make me spend my money and wrestle my iPod out of my hand, but I don't know how good the device is yet.