Nokia to launch music service in India shortly

In order to fight piracy, Nokia plans to launch its music service 'Comes With Music' in India in a couple of months to give unlimited music access to its consumers, a top company official said.

"To fight piracy we need to develop content that is compelling, innovative, exclusive and subscription models which are almost free," Nokia India Marketing Director Vineet Taneja said here.

"This service will be targeted for mid and top-end models... Starting with Rs 6,000-7,000 handsets. Service will be available in existing and upcoming handsets," he added.

The company has tied-up with Indian record labels including, T series, Venus, Tips, Big Music, Eros and Indian Music Industry (IMI).

With the launch of the music service, consumers will get access to unlimited music downloads from the Nokia Music Store for a year, Taneja said, adding that "it will offer 3.5 million tracks of all genres, Indian and international labels".

Consumers can browse, download and sync music either to their computer or directly on to the mobile device, he said.

Nokia has already launched this service in 26 countries.

"We first launched the music service in the UK in the year 2000 and later ventured into other markets like Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Finland and others. We also have tie-ups with international music labels like Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, EMI and Warner," Taneja said.

"We started this journey of giving music beyond voice and SMS some five years ago or so. Today, every device has music ...A low-end handset will at least have FM radio," he said.

The way we define music is the one that has a memory card...Our range in this segment starts from Rs 4,000. In the next few weeks we will launch something that is even cheaper than this, he added.

On the growing competition he said, "competition will always be there. There is a need to stick to basics, for innovation, distribution and brand-building. In this industry it is easy to pick up volumes but difficult to sustain. We had competition in the past... We had Sony Ericsson and Motorola and these are not small companies."