Just how good is Comes With Music?


Here's the mixed review of Nokia’s Comes With Music Service by Mobile Entertainment’s executive editor Tim Green.

According to Tim, the software itself seems a bit clunky, but once installed properly it seems to work. Sounds like a lot of stuff I’ve tried in the past, and that type of experience will certainly disappoint some folks. The store gets high marks, as do the security features, and there’s a good comparison vs. Omnifone's MusicStation. The fact that it is sideloaded sucks.

As most people know by now, Comes With Music on a 5300 XpressMusic handset is all sideloaded. There’s not even a link to the Music Store on the 2.5G handset. So first you have to load up the Nokia Music PC app, which predictably didn’t load properly, then crashed, then finally installed but worked pretty slowly. Bad start, but then things got much better.

Transferring music to the handset was wonderfully quick and easy too. And listening? The 5300 comes with a regular headphone jack, so I used by own earpieces and was happily blasted with a satisfyingly loud and bassy sound.

So you can see that the Comes With Music concept works (for the consumer at least), but as ever it’s the implementation that is shaky. It’s also interesting to compare the experience with Omnifone's MusicStation, which offers unlimited tracks for a monthly fee.

Unlike Comes With Music on a 5300, MusicStation works from the handset. Downloads are pretty quick and the catalogue is very deep. I found the user interface a little bewildering – tracks can’t just be played, they have to be added to a playlist first – and playback was far too quiet for me (although that is more likely down to the handset).

But what both services are clearly doing is attempting to claim music for mobile, after years of domination by iTunes and the PC.

The full review is worth a read.

For more, see:
Nokia's Comes with Music service launches next month -- UK first
Engadget
Nokia confident free Music Downloads of Comes With Music will profit
SWB