Nokia expands Music Store and Comes With Music reach

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 12 March 2009 11:55

Your IT - Mobility

Frustrated that the Nokia Music Store hasn't opened in your country yet? It could be coming soon.

Nokia's just added Mexico to the list of countries where its Music Stores are operating, and Portugal, Norway and South Africa are on the agenda for the coming months.

And if you don't like that relatively traditional way of buying music, there's the all-you-can-eat Comes With Music service bundled with certain Nokia handsets.

Offering unlimited downloads from a library of millions of tracks, Comes With Music lets customers keep the songs even when their 12 or 18-month subscription has expired. Unlike the Music Store, those tracks can only be transferred between one handset and one PC.

Comes With Music will be is already available in the UK and Singapore. It will debut in Australia later this month, with Italy, Sweden, Mexico and others to follow.

Nokia has also announced (pre-announced?) two more music-oriented phones that will be offered with Comes With Music in certain markets when they ship in the third quarter of 2009.

The Nokia 5730 XpressMusic features a full QWERTY keyboard, N-Gage gaming capability, and direct access to Internet services including Facebook.

The Nokia 5330 XpressMusic also offers direct access to services such as Facebook and MySpace, and boasts more than 26 hours of playback time on one charge.