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Nokia Music Store Live In Aus |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Tuesday, 22 April 2008 |
Nokia now has its own music store in Australia and has priced downloads
at A$1.70 per track with albums priced from A$17.00. A subscription
service priced at A$10 per month allows PC users to stream an unlimited
number of full length tracks.
Nokia says the catalogue includes "millions" of tracks including a good
range of local artists. "Not only we do we have millions of tracks
available for consumers, but we have something for everyone,
whatever their music tastes. Australian consumers can be confident that
the Nokia Music Store will have a broad range of genres including
popular and non-mainstream genres and independent artists," said Shaun
Colligan, General Manager, Nokia Australia.
In fact, Nokia is celebrating the launch with an exclusive live album
from The John Butler Trio which was only recorded in March this year.
The album is a live performance. There's also exclusive track f rom
Pete Murray and Kate Miller-Heidke. The free track of the week will be
from Stone Parade, winners of
the Nokia Be Heard competition in 2007.
The company has turned to Jimmy Barnes to be the first local music
recommender, with his suggestion for his top playlist featured for
store visitors.
"We want to be the most locally relvent music story and will feature
artists such as The John Butler Trio, The Presets, Pete Murray, Kate
Miller Heidke, Powderfinger, Silverchair, Lior, Cut Copy, Kisschasey,
Kasey Chambers and many more," says Colligan in a statement.
Your music store account can be accessed from either a personal
computer or a mobile device with the service optimised for a good range
of Nokia phones including the Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia N81 8GB and the N82.
Other non-Nokia devices should work so long as they are compatible with
Microsoft's Windows Media Audio (WMA) and Microsoft's Digital Rights
Management encoding as the files are all DM WMA encoded which is the
only format available from the store. Nokia says Windows
Media Player 11 is the safest software for playback, but that version
9.0 or 10.0 may also work for you.
The site is not compatible with Firefox and using the service requires
Windows XP or Vista as you would expect from the reliance on DM WMA.
The tracks are encoded at either 128 kbps or 192 kbps and each has its
own rights information which may differ per track. Although the tracks
we checked were all assigned unlimited transfer from PC to mobile
device and up to 10 CD burns.
Once downloaded to your PC, the tunes can be sync'ed to your mobile
device using Windows Media Player. Using this method you can get your
tracks on a much wider range of Nokia devices including the latest
Xpress Music handets, Nokia 5610 and Nokia 5310.
If you go for the streaming subscription (this is only available on
your computer, not your phone), the site allows you to create
customised playlists and to add tracks on a wishlist that you can
decide to buy later. Tracks purchased can also be transferred via your
PC to compatible Nokia devices. The music collection can then simply be
synchronised between the PC and a mobile using Windows Media Player 11.
The music publisher list is believed to include Sony BMG
Australia, EMI and Universal Music and a range of smaller and independent labels.
Payment is only available using an Australian issued credit or debit
card or with a pre-paid voucher. Vouchers should be available at major
retailers. You can buy credit in advance and unused pre-paid credit
expires after 12 months, but you can apply for an extension.
http://music.nokia.com.au
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