With the market saying 'no' to Nokia's Ovi Store, what do you think can be done to change this?Having got the initial news out of the way, I wanted to post a brief note to say thank you to everyone who’s supported us along our journey.
I’m going to do a larger piece next week — right now I want to get the MIR TV Rome and Prague videos finally edited and live for next week.
It seems that Tunebite allows Nokia’s DRM to be cracked. Tunebite has been around for a while so it’s not a new system.
Tunebite internally “plays” the DRM’ed music at high speed and converts the digital output back into a non-DRM file.
It’s very unlikely that Nokia can do much about this, it’s like plugging the output of the sound card in your PC back into a recorder (though there’s an analogue conversion there). Tunebite does the same thing, but in the digital domain.
I got this note in from Paul Newton, a reasonably happy LG Renoir user.
Paul saw the footage we shot at the Renoir launch and, suitably impressed with the device, took the plunge.
But there’s a glaring, glaring issue with the device.
Have a read:
Hi Ewan,
I am looking for some advice. I recently upgraded my handset to an LG KC910 after seeing the footage of it from the blogger party on your show. Overall I am extremely happy with it. However one annoyance with it is when browsing music that I loaded onto the supplied micro SDcard. When you select albums they are displayed (and play in alphabetical order) not the track order specified in the tags for the files. I can see no way of changing this. The manual doesn’t mention it. I had a quick search on the web and found a few other people reporting the same issue. I tried contacting LG Mobile Phone support. The operator I spoke to couldn’t give me an answer and has emailed the head office, but couldn’t give me a time scale for a response. I was wondering what I should do next. Do you have any contacts that could give you answer on this? I suspect that the software currently on the phone doesn’t allow albums to be played in the correct order. This seems like a big oversight on LG’s part. I hope that they intend to issue a software update and soon as this was one of the reasons I went of for this phone. You may want to mention this issue on the site so that others are aware of this. I dodn’t see it in any of the (many) reviews I read.
Keep up the good work.
Regards,
Paul Newton
Quite simply, the LG Renoir is a ‘Fisherprice’ music phone.
We were never sent a Renoir test handset so we weren’t able to test these kind of things.
On the face of it, Paul should shut right up. You’ve got music, right Paul? It does play music? What more could you want?
In reality, this is 100% ridiculous. It ONLY plays music in alphabetical order?
What chump programmed that?
Total rubbish.
Total unmitigated rubbish.
You’d think some bright spark, somewhere deep in the bowels of LG, would have thought that SOME people might like to play music in ALBUM order.
Anyway to answer your questions Paul, I do have LG contacts.
I’ve got two routes to LG. One is through the LG blog. Chris and the team there are very good — but there’s not much they can do, I suspect, in this situation. I suspect all they could do is pass your enquiry to LG in Korea.
Which brings me to my second route to LG — direct to Korea. You’ll need to give me a few days Paul, but I’ll put this issue to them and ask for a response.
If they respond with some kind of acknowledgement then that’ll be good. If they respond with a fix or a solution, even better.
Trouble is, these LG devices nowadays are literally pieces of plastic and metal. They can’t be easily upgraded, even though there’s software inside. Don’t expect a 2.2 style iPhone upgrade for the Renoir.
If you’ve got suggestions for Paul, please post them here.
“It’s all very well for folk in London”, I thought, as I walked through the O2 Dome the other day, “But if you’re sat in Hartlepool, there’s not much value to be got from being an O2 customer.”
The multi-year sponsorship of the Millenium Dome is rather nifty. Renamed ‘the O2′, you can get priority tickets to some rather huge gigs if you’re an O2 customer. Reasonably cool. But irrelevant if you live elsewhere around the UK.
Until today, that is.
O2 have done a deal with LiveNation/AMG. From the 1st of January next year, AMG’s venues are to be renamed. So what was once known as ‘The Brixton Academy’ will now be known as ‘the O2 Academy Brixton’.
O2 customers will gain priority access to tickets to all gigs at the venues, as well as other Live Nation events across the country. In total, O2 customers will gain special access to as many as 4,000 Live Nation produced shows a year in the UK up to 48 hours before they go on general sale.
That is set to be a persuasive pitch for those for whom live music is an absolute must. Me? I’m never that impressed standing at the back surrounded by drunk Coldplay fans. But if you’re one of those Coldplay fans desperate to get a ticket before everyone else does, would you change your network operator to o2? Quite possibly.
Here are the new O2 Academy venues:
O2 Academy Brixton
02 Academy Islington
O2 Academy Birmingham
O2 Academy Bristol
O2 Academy Glasgow
O2 Academy Liverpool
O2 Academy Newcastle
O2 Academy Oxford
O2 Academy Sheffield
O2 Academy Leeds
O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire
This is what swings it for me though: Fast track entry. I’d use my O2 iPhone account for that. Definitely.
This is also quite an interesting point:
O2 will work closely with Live Nation/AMG to enhance the concert going experience, developing technologies like mobile ticketing which is both convenient and environmentally friendly, and utilize the venues to assess the benefits of contact-less NFC (Near Field Communication) technology in the music industry.
Interesting, interesting…
This note is from Tom Adler of Didiom, a very interesting new service that’s all about ‘placeshifting’ your music to any device.
Let’s get the overview from Tom.
- - - - -
Hi Ewan,
I am writing to invite you to test out a new mobile service that we’ve just launched called Didiom.
Didiom allows you to placeshift your music collection - streaming music files from your PC to your mobile phone wherever you are, which means now you can have your entire collection “to-go”, no matter how large it is.
Didiom also has a unique marketplace that lets you buy music wirelessly from our catalog of over 1.5 million tracks. Plus there’s a “name-your-own-price” button that lets you bid on music to get it at the price you want to pay.
All the facts have been incorporated into a factsheet that’s online, with flickr photos and embeddable video;
[ Here's the video ]
We’re trying to get as many people as we can to try out the free application, so anything you can do to help get the word out to your readers would be very appreciated.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks for your time.
Tom
- - - - -
Now, the bad news for most readers: This is US-only for the time being. That is an arse.
But let’s have a peek in the door at what handsets it works on:
That’s a good range — obviously Windows Mobile is the main platform for Didiom at the moment, but I’m very encouraged to see the Blackberry Curve on the list.
I can see myself really liking Didiom. I’ve bought a lot of iTunes music and, frankly, I think that’s somebody else’s problem. I don’t see why I should be penalised for doing business with Apple when a new moblie music service or device comes along. So good news, Didiom.
If you’re in the States, give it a go?
Thanks for writing, Tom!
To all 250,000 readers, if you’d like to check out Comes With Music, Nokia’s latest wannabe attempt to make music work for normobs accustomed to absolute rubbish Nokia user interfaces, then check out some other sites. All About Symbian might be a good start.
A Google for Comes With Music should work, also.
As always, we heard about it all after the event. Goodness knows what they’re up to at Nokia Towers. We would have brought you an entire TV show dedicated to Comes With Music had we known about it all.
But don’t fear! Don’t fret!
Oh no. Here’s the email that arrived this afternoon from Nokia:
Dear Ewan,
Please see the link below to view the multimedia news release that contains B-roll material and sound bites in broadcast quality from the NOKIA REMIX event that took place in London yesterday.
For viewing the on demand web cast, visit http://events.nokia.com.
Should you have any questions or comments, please send feedback to Danielle Ross.
So if you’d like to watch some B-Roll of the event — that’s your link up there.
We will, whenever we can be bothered, bring you some Nokia related content.
Although, actually, I don’t think we will, come to think of it. What is the point?
Comes With Music. It’s ok. It’s certainly not brilliant. It doesn’t match the iTunes experience one jot. Is it mass market? Yeah. Your normob will soldier on and wrap their head around the rather involved UI. Your average 16 year old will put up with it. Just like they do with their current Nokias. And it’ll work. And it’ll position Nokia nicely with music.
Next.
So, if you’re up for a bit of B-Roll — that’s the link up there.
Otherwise, well.. I’ve a note from Carphone Warehouse telling me the Nokia Comes With Music handset will be retailing for just under 130 quid shortly. I’m not be disposed to Carphone Warehouse either after experiencing their not-Lifeline Insurance service. But I was thinking of going and buying a handset so I can check out Comes With Music.
It’s the right thing to do.
I just don’t feel up for shedding out the cash to both Nokia and Carphone Warehouse today.
Nokia’s much talked about digital music site, Nokia Music Store has been officially launched in Spain today allowing all the spanish customers to enjoy portable music whenever they wish to.
The Nokia Music Store currently boats a wide catalogue of over 4 million songs, with tracks from record labels and indie artists alike. The spanish version of the store promises tracks from artists like La Oreja de Van Gogh, Pereza, Melendi, Amaral, Deluxe, Krakovia, Coti, Ismael Serrano, Extromoduro and Miguel Bosé and Nokia has already reached agreements with various local record labels to promote the local talent too.
Speaking about the launch, Manuel Reverte, Head of Services and Software at Nokia Spain, says:
With the launch of the Nokia Music Store, Nokia aims to make available to all Spanish users of all ages the music that they want at any moment they want, with all the facilities that mobility permits nowadays,
Lots of people I’ve been meeting have been talking in hushed voices about this.
“Comes with Music” — that’s the new offensive from Nokia and it’s got a lot — a LOT — of people quaking with concern.
When a company such as Nokia — routinely knocking out millions of handsets in a given day — decides to give away unlimited music with a handset, you need to start panicking if you’ve got anything whatsoever to do with this field.
How does it work?
Well, it does-what-it-says-on-the-tin. Buy the phone and you get access to an unlimited amount of music.
Ok. Not unlimited. Think iTunes. Think MusicStation. A *good* amount of tracks. You’ll find stuff that you like, at least.
It’s the Nokia 5300 series handsets that are to get this first. Specifically, the 5310 XpressMusic. Fair enough. No bother. I’m an iTunes man myself. Start knocking out Nokia N-Series handsets with this and I’ll certainly reconsider this position.
There’s certainly a lot of questions to answer.
Carphone Warehouse are the exclusive UK pre-pay channel for the device. If you want ‘Comes-with-Music’, you need to get it from them, this Christmas. You can, if you’re extra-specially interested, get yourself on the pre-order list at CarphoneWarehouse.com.
We should get a look at the device and answer a heckuvalot of questions this evening at the Carphone Warehouse Christmas Preview.
‘Til then, I leave you with some excited bullish statements from some of the key players:
Tero Ojanpera, executive vice president and head of the Nokia Entertainment and Communities business, said: “We believe that Comes With Music will transform the way people enjoy music. With unlimited music access for a year, you can enjoy your favorite artists or delve into new genres without having to worry about individual track or album purchases.”
Simon Ainslie, Nokia UK Managing Director, said: “Comes With Music is the most compelling digital music offer ever introduced to the UK. You get a fantastic Nokia device with unlimited access for a year to a huge catalog of music. We’re thrilled to be working with Carphone Warehouse to bring Comes With Music to the UK.”
Andrew Harrison, UK CEO, The Carphone Warehouse, said: “We expect the Nokia 5310 Comes With Music to be the gift for Christmas and at the top of all shopping lists. We know how much our customers love music and we hope to make music millionaires of people everywhere.”
For a little while, expect a negative reaction when you try and buy one of these from Vodafone or any other operator with its own music sales channels.
