Nokia has had its free Nokia Music service for a while, allowing free music streaming on its Lumia handsets in the U.S. since last September. But the service allowed for only a limited number of song skips and playlists. Now it’s announced the impending launch of Music+, a premium music-streaming service that will afford an infinite number of skips and unlimited downloads to Nokia’s Mix Radio service.
Music+ will “roll out in the next few weeks” and pricing will vary by region. In the UK it will be £3.99/month ($5.37), though the official U.S. pricing has not been announced yet. This makes it more expensive than Pandora One, but close to the lowest Spotify Premium subscription.
Since Nokia Music is not ad-supported, this presents the challenge of wooing consumers with more features alone, such as the infinite song skips, unlimited playlists, offline use, higher quality streaming, lyrics and desktop access via the Music+ site.
However, is this extra service going to be enough to lure people towards the Nokia Lumia handsets on which its offered? It’s unlikely, given the strong winds at the backs of Samsung and Apple right now.
Speaking to Nokia’s Conversation’s mouthpiece Jyrki Rosenberg, VP Entertainment at Nokia, said:
We spend a lot of time listening to how people use the service and have even managed to half the amount of skips per songs played, which is a combination of our systems and musicologists understanding and shaping Nokia Music around the users.
Yes, but unfortunately, the fate of Nokia will not be down to musicologists but to the myriad other winds buffeting Nokia, not least of which will be the launch of the BlackBerry 10 this week.