Nokia is making discussions with top music content providers plus music companies with the intention to launch virtual music stores in the Indian market.  

Mr. Chandan Dang, Nokia India Regional General Manager (North), said that Finnish giant is joining hands with around 150 music companies, which includes Universal Music, Warner Bros, Sony BMG and other national music leaders.

In India, Nokia has decided to provide the service with a free one-year subscription along with the purchase Music compatible mobile phones run on Symbian’s S60 operating system (OS).

Mr. Dang said, “We are planning the launch the services in the first half of this year. Our similar service in the United Kingdom launched on 5310Xpress music device is evincing good response from music lovers. However, our format may be different than the one in UK as preferences of Indians are different from the English.”

“Also, unlike the UK, in India the service should be made compatible on low-end handsets for a better click with Indian customers. The service will also help in boosting the handset sales,'' Mr. Dang added.

The company also said that the one-year subscription service is unique, and it lets consumers to access and download unlimited songs on their handsets as well as computers even after the subscription expires.

Moreover, Nokia is also working on removing digital right management (DRM) from the music available via its Comes with Music service.

Currently, Nokia’s digital entertainment service ‘Comes with Music’ is only available on a few handsets, which includes Nokia's XpressMusic 5310 handset.

The service permits users to download unlimited songs from the Nokia Music Store for 1-year after buying a compatible Nokia handset. The users can keep the music after the year is up.

The Nokia Music Store features tracks from four major record labels. But, the DRM prevents the tracks from being transferred to another digital music player or from being burned to CD.