Nokia set to unveil “unique music experience”

My day started very early this morning heading to the airport in Dubai to fly to Beirut for a press conference later tonight (7pm local time) followed by “Dinner and show”. Now I don’t know what it is they’re unveiling today but it is connected to music as the invitation says that we will be “welcoming a unique music experience in the Middle East.” Perhaps you can also get some clues from the fact that the information given out to us, basically the schedule for activities, has the http://nokia.com/playnow URL on it.

That site is all about the “Comes with Music” service. Basically you can with the Nokia Music Store and OVI Store app (Windows only) download music and from there put it on a compatible Nokia phone. Among the “Comes with Music” phones we find 5800, N97, X3 and X6. If you look at Nokia.ae you’ll see that the X3 and X6 are not listed there so perhaps they’re included in tonight’s unveiling. And one interesting aspect of this service is that it involves unlimited number of downloads out of a selection of millions of songs, according to Nokia, and you get to keep the songs. The only requirement is a “Comes with Music” Nokia phone. Seems like you get a code in the box with a compatible phone with which you can activate the service.

If you check http://www.comeswithmusic.com no countries in the Middle East are listed right now. Perhaps that’s changing later today. If this is what’s coming today from Nokia it’ll mean they have a very interesting alternative to Apple’s iTunes and considering there is no iTunes store for music, movies and TV for the Middle East, you could say Nokia beat Apple to it.

But this is of course just speculation based on a few facts and some hearsay. Let’s see what happens later.

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