Comes With Music is Nokia’s all-you-download music service and it’s something we’ve been testing out over the last few months. The service is tied to your phone and one home PC but that doesn’t stop you from amassing a great music library. Check out how we’ve been getting on with Nokia’s Comes With Music….
We’re half way through building a music library with Comes With Music, so we thought this was a good point to reflect on what we’ve learnt so far about using the Nokia Music service Comes With Music.
The first thing to bear in mind is the breadth of content on Nokia Music. At the moment there are some six million tracks and its being added to weekly.
The Single and Album of the Week sections tend to give you a good indication of the latest pop and the Top 40 charts are an essential part of any music service.
Nokia has done a great job of braking Nokia Music down into simple music categories. This means you can get straight to the stuff you like. That said, if you’re in the mood for trying something a little different, we really like the Beginner’s Guides to… section, as this offers a quick introduction to new music genres without having to think too hard about it.
At the moment, all the music on Comes With Music is WMA files with a bitrate of 192kbps. They are also DRM (Digital Rights Managed) so you won’t be able to copy them off to anything other than your PC or XpressMusic phone. It is expected that Nokia will switch to MP3 in 2010, which should see some of the restrictions lifted.
However, we have found that navigation can be slow going. The Nokia Music interface and player isn’t the smoothest example of a store and player combined as getting music to download and play can prove fiddly at times.
What’s worse, some times bands are categorised wrongly or just not tagged in the right way – such as The Jam or Kiss – so you need to be able to think your way around. One good tip is to type in the name of an album by the artist you’re after, as once you’ve found the album, you’ll find the rest of their back catalogue on offer.
This may all sound as though Comes With Music is flawed but far from it, it’s merely teething troubles for a relatively new service. We’ve found it a great way of getting access to music not only for the individual but for the whole family – there are four people in our house all with different musical tastes, all finding Comes With Music a great way to tap in to new music.
If you spend a little time getting to grips with the foibles of the Nokia Music service it’s a great way to get music on to your laptop and your XpressMusic phone. We’re pretty sure improvements will come down the line fairly soon to make it a smoother and faster experience.