I am a bit late on this: Nokia announced details of the Comes With Music service last week. Lots of commentary on the service is available on the Internet.
I am interested in only aspect of the service - it's price. No other aspect will be as determinative of success.
According to Jon Healy at the LA Times, the unbundled cost of the service is about $90. In an era where 99 cents is too much for people to pay for music, $90 upfront will never work - for any amount of music.
At this price point Comes With Music will never be more than a notch in the small subscription music service niche.
On the other hand, if Nokia ever drops the price point to $0 and goes to ad-support, the service will explode.
5 comments:
I've nothing against the ad-supported model, but I think dismissing the service off-hand is a bit sharp. We need to look at the whole package and not just the service, the phones it's coming on are 1/3 of iPhone price which is Nokia's only competitor in this space I believe, so that must be factored in as well.
um, i guess you fired from the hip without reading anything about the service. $90 is the sunk cost already included in the price of the device - the consumer bears $0 of this cost directly.
No anonymous I think you are wrong. The $90 is the difference in the price of the phone to the consumer with the service. The service is only available in Europe right now where operators don't subsidize phones.
yes, america is one of the only places in the world that subsidize the phones.
can you find an example of 2 identical devices, one with price X and the other with price x+90?
happy hunting!
Of course phones are subsidised in europe as well: i just got an iPhone 3G for £0.
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