As a way to promote mobile phones as media devices and generate additional revenues for the music industry, handset manufacturer Nokia and recording company Universal Music have agreed to offer free music downloads on selected Nokia phones.
According to the New York Times, both companies agreed to let users download Universal Music’s entire catalog to their cellphones for 12 months free of charge.
Well, this is still a business deal so don’t ever think Universal is doing this for the good of mankind. Though details of this deal are not clear, Universal is reported to receive a portion of the profits generated from the sales of new handsets.
“It’s one thing to have people downloading free music illegally,” said Mark Mulligan, an analyst at Jupiter Research. “What is bold and strategically important about this is that they are tacitly accepting that they will never get digital youth to pay for music.”
Nokia’s strong interest in the music business is becoming more apparent these days. Recently, it launched Nokia Music Store to compete with Apple’s iTunes and just this week it officially released Nokia Internet Radio in selected handsets.
Originally posted on December 5, 2007 @ 12:15 pm