In order the grab a piece of the music downloads market currently dominated by Apple’s iTunes, Nokia is launching an innovative “Comes with Music” program. The idea is bundle handsets with a year of unlimited access to “millions of tracks” from (at least initially) Universal Music Group International. And while it’s hard to find any good words about Nokia’s “partner in crime,” we salute the Finish giant for taking initiative and trying to push the music industry one step forward towards adopting the new ways of doing business. Yap, the DRM will be included, but what the hack — I guess that will still be the way how RIAA’s doing business.
Back to Nokia. They’ve managed to pull such deal from Universal to allow its customers to keep the music even when they cancel the service. And speaking of the service, you’ll probably want to know the launch date – it’s “mid 2008,” no exact date is provided.