‘Comes With Music’ Launching March 20 on Nokia 5800 XpressMusic
We’ve known it was going to launch this quarter and feature local music from the Liberation record label, but now Nokia has unveiled the official release date for their ‘Comes With Music’ service for Australia. Starting on March 20, you’ll be able to pick up a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, and have the ability to download as much music as you want for a year that you’ll be able to keep forever.The phone will cost $979 outright, which may seem a little expensive for what is essentially a mid-range Nokia, but you have to remember that you can download as much music as you want from the 4-million song strong catalogue over 12 months, and that cost is built into the price. In addition, “selected service providers” will be offering the handset for $1109 with the bonus of 18 months subscription to the ‘Comes With Music’ service.
At this stage, it is only the XpressMusic that is eligible with the service, but Nokia promise that more handsets will have the option as time moves on. Oh, and all the tracks are laden with DRM, so you won’t be able to play them on your iPod.
As much as I really like the idea, I think a lot of people who might be interested in taking it up will wait for a higher end smartphone to work with the service before they sign up. Would you guys move to the 5800 for this? I know I wouldn’t, but if it were on the N96 or the upcoming N97… well that might entice me enough.
[Nokia]
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Comments
Nearly $1K for this phone? HAHAHA. Buy it on Plemix for $600AUD. The phone is absolutely not worth spending more than $600AUD outright – the single tap/double tap inconsistency in the interface is ridiculous.
So what happens when the phone carks it after 12-24 months? Your music collection kicks the bucket too? What labels/artists have signed on?
Anyone know?
Ambitious plan.
I thought the 5800 touchscreen looked like a decent, capable phone. (you could have included a pic of the 5800 instead of confusing us with whatever that thing is)
yeh get the picture right gizmodo, pretty basic preocedure i would have thgough….dah… wonder how much of this article is correct…
I was really considering buying this phone… but now i’m not even going to think about it.
When Nokia released the phone (without release dates) they stated that it is going to be a cheap version of current Smartphones in the $500 range. Now the price has doubled, with the unlimited music downloads put into that price tag, which i can understand but now its just not worth it when newer phones are f*cking up after 12-18 months. The point of the unlimited music downloads was to draw interest, buyers and people downloading music legally.
Well now Nokia have just gone and stuffed it up and made the price the same as the iPhone which may not come with unlimted downloads for a year, but has HOW many applications, games, iTunes, Safari browser, great looking phone, OS…. but also at the same time not worth the money.
I’m disappointed. Espec. when other countries aren’t paying this much. Australian’s get ripped off with the currency exchange rate.
this is a much better handset than the iphone that goes for $900.00 with only 8gb internal (no removable mem for upgarde) and comes with 12 months music which easily is worth more than $100.00
The N97 is going to kill it but it will be around $1400.00 and wont be available in aus until 2010
lol at cad.
The safari browser is the worst thing on an iphone and all those apps are gimicky and usually do not get used after the day of download (i think 95%)
The nokia allows for video streaming and flash something the iphone sorely lacks.
Horizontal keyboard entry, STEREO bluetooth, repalceable battery (apple charge over 200.00 to replace battery can buy the nokia battery for 40.00)
The music downloaded is allowed to be saved onto one computer as well as the phone and all artist are available to download.
video calling, video capture, removable memory, DV-b tuner and tv out the list goes on and on of the features that nokia include that apple do not. The apple iphone should not be worth $600.00 except apple have make up for the millions they spend on marketing instead of features to lure idiots into buying their inferior products.