Paul Jacobson

The Nokia Music Store launched recently in South Africa and it was generally pretty well received. I attended the launch event at the Piatto Unplugged at the Cedar Square Mall in Fourways. I posted my thoughts in real-time on FriendFeed which turned out to be a pretty effective way to post updates and keep them all in one location. A number of people were tweeting about the launch and, subsequently, the store and its pros and cons on Twitter too using #NMS_ZA.

A little bit about the Nokia Music Store

The event began with a pretty early breakfast and a few quick discussions with Nokia SA’s execs who were there for the launch. I had an opportunity to chat to Jake Larsen, Nokia’s Head of Music for the Middle East and Africa. Nokia released a couple videos in its press pack and one of them was a video of Larsen explaining how the service works. You can watch the videos on Ovi or using this interface:

The store itself has a very clean look. I found it to be pretty user-friendly when I played around with it and watched other people playing around with it at the launch. I have used the mobile version on my E71 and that was a pretty good experience too, especially considering the mobile format. I think users who access the service through their phones will be pleasantly surprised. It was pretty easy to create my account, load credit (I received R200 credit from Nokia as part of my press pack) and buy songs. I haven’t heard the new U2 album so I bought that album with my credits. As Nokia has advertised, the album cost R100. The one thing I didn’t see was a way to download the whole album in one go. Instead I downloaded a single track to try it out on my phone. I see from the Nokia Music Store Twitter account that the tracks are being released in 192kbps. This is better than the 128kbps we often see in other Microsoft DRM’d music stores but not quite as good as the 256kbps tracks you can get from iTunes (the formats are different too and that also has an impact as I understand it).

The process of buying songs from the store using a mobile phone is slick. Using a mobile device to buy music from the store certainly shouldn’t be too much of a hassle and I can see this fast becoming a preferred method of accessing the store. I also understand from Nokia that, subject to restrictions imposed by the music industry, songs can be transferred a number of times so music bought from the store using a mobile phone should be transferrable to a PC and vice versa. Take into account the growing number of phones with a standard headphone jack and it isn’t difficult to see how this service could shake up the local music sales market.

Thoughts about the Nokia Music Store

You have probably read that the music store is really only available through compatible Nokia phones and Windows computers running Internet Explorer and Windows Media player. The music you can buy from the music store is also restricted using Microsoft DRM (hence the need for IE and Windows Media Player). These are limitations which effectively render the store inaccessible to a number of potential customers who want to have more freedom with the music they buy online. If you try access the music store using any other operating system and/or browser, this is what you will see:

I asked Jake when people who are not using IE on Windows machines will be able to access the music store. He told me that Nokia is working on Firefox compatibility and we should see more cross platform compatibility in due course. I’ve expressed concern about Nokia’s fixation on Windows as its platform of choice and while it may make sense where resources are limited and a choice must be made which platform to support, Nokia’s commitment to open source just seems to run contrary to its approach to its applications and access to the music store. Larsen and Nokia SA’s general manager, Mathia Nalappan have both told me that Nokia expects to be DRM-free later this year but I can’t help wondering why Nokia didn’t start with a DRM-free store, especially considering that going DRM-free is hardly a new trend.

The iTunes Store (technically not available here in SA but many have found a workaround and are buying music and content from the iTunes Store daily) now sells all its music DRM-free and at a relatively high bitrate. Nokia is not a small player and it is disappointing that it found itself unable to provide a less restrictive offering. By the way, Duncan McLeod wrote a pretty interesting article, as did Simon Dingle, about DRM and its unintended consequences, worth reading. I agree with Duncan and Simon and have long believed that the only thing DRM really achieves is incentivise a number of otherwise law abiding consumers to become pirates because they music they want to buy online simply isn’t being made available to them on reasonable terms. While you’re at it, be sure to read Vincent Hofmann’s post too. Vincent and I had a good chat about the service at the launch.

The main reason I haven’t ditched my Nokia E71 and ended over a decade of Nokia loyalty in favour of an iPhone is that this overly restrictive tactic does not appear to be indicative of Nokia’s approach to software and content. It has stated over and over that it is committed to open source and to going DRM-free. The decision to open a DRM’d music store was likely more a compromise made necessary by a short-sighted and protectionist music industry. While I’d like to think Nokia would have enough pull in the marketplace to force the music industry to abandon its demands for DRM, the realities on the ground may well have been very different. Two of the other videos I linked to above and which you can access through the widget I embedded discuss the challenges facing a music store like this and present views from Sony, one of the content contributors. There is a fair amount of fluff in the videos but I do believe people like Larsen when they talk about their commitment to going DRM free later this year.

This leads me to another realisation that I had at the launch event. A number of Nokia execs I have had the opportunity to speak to recently have talked about Nokia’s shift towards services from pure products. I am beginning to see Nokia more as a services platform company than a phone and communications gear manufacturer. Sure they produce great devices and those devices are among the most popular in the world (despite what US pundits have to say about the iPhone’s popularity). It would surprise me to learn that Nokia’s leadership long ago determined that its devices would serve as a valuable distribution channel for a content and software business in the form of the soon to be launched Ovi Store and the Nokia Music Store. In other words, while Apple got into the iPod business through its iTunes Music Store, Nokia is getting into the music and content business in the form of the Nokia Music Store through its established device user-base. The result is pretty similar: a business built, in part, on a rich, well designed music store that is available on a device in your pocket or, most likely, on your desk.

There have been rumours about the iTunes Store opening here more fully (at the moment the official SA iTunes Store sells iPhone/iPod Touch applications) at some point in the future. I am not holding my breath for that although it will be nice if/when it does arrive. Despite my reservations about the Nokia Music Store as it currently stands, it is a windfall for the majority of its users who do/will use Windows and Internet Explorer/Windows Media Player. It is also the answer to a great many prayers for a legal download option at a reasonable price. R10 per song and R100 per album is a pretty good deal in a market where CDs cost north of R150 on average. Nokia is also taking South Africa seriously enough to make it the 16th (or thereabouts) location the store is opening in. There are about 22 regional iTunes stores at the moment and South Africa isn’t on the list just yet. If the Nokia Music Store was accessible to me as a Mac user running iTunes, Firefox and Safari I’d be planning how much I could spend there each month on legal music downloads rather than trying to make do with less popular or less legitimate alternatives. After all, like many people who get their music online, I do want to pay for my music and I want to download music legally. All I need is an opportunity to do that.

Update:
Here is the thread on FriendFeed (this is an experiment for me, hope it works).

I’ve had a number of interesting discussions with Nokia staff in the last few weeks and one of the bigger themes to emerge from those discussions is Nokia’s commitment to being more open. In some ways this is a contradiction because Nokia lacks adequate support for operating systems other than Windows and DRM’s its music in its music store. That being said there are reasons for this (and I’ve talked about these issues before) and it is clear that Nokia is placing a lot of emphasis on its open source technologies which it has acquired.

Mark Selby

I had an opportunity to interview Mark Selby when he was out here recently. Mark is Nokia’s Vice President Industry Collaborations. I received a brief bio from Fleishman Hillard’s Lisa Rabbitts:

Mark Selby has responsibility for Nokia’s relationships with external industry, academic, regulatory and citizen organisations in building the ecosystems for next generation mobile applications, services and technologies. A recognized authority on mobility, emerging technologies and convergence, he has worked in the mobile, broadcast and IT industries for over 20 years.

Mark was formerly Vice President, Multimedia, with global responsibility for Nokia’s multimedia experience operations, including Mobile TV, Radio, imaging, audio, video, and Social Media and Networks implementations.

Prior to joining Nokia in May 2004, he was Senior Vice President at IMG Media/TWI, responsible for the group’s mobile activities in sports, entertainment, TV, radio and online, including production, rights and technology. IMG Media/TWI is the largest independent sports TV producer.

Mark was formerly CEO of Mobile Channel Network, which designed, produced and delivered a wide range of mobile services, including Essential Sports, MTV mobile, Big Brother and Mobile Ibiza. He has worked with many rights holders, including Manchester United and Liverpool Football Clubs, the International Rugby Board, the International Olympic Committee, musicians, athletes and models.

Mark’s previous roles include President of Solid Information Technology, Executive Director Health On the Net Foundation, President Internet Society, Geneva, radio producer and presenter at WRG-FM, board member of Linux International and senior executive roles at Digital Equipment Corp. and Xerox. He was appointed Expert to the European Commission on EDI in 1987.

The discussion covered a range of topics (you can hear the audio below and download the audio file here). I particularly enjoyed our discussion about Nokia’s music store and why Nokia incorporated DRM. Mark reiterated that the music industry required Nokia to implement DRM in the music available through the store and that Nokia is committed to going DRM free. The interview is worth listening to. It does run for almost an hour so grab a cup of something and enjoy.

Mark talked about how Nokia has bought the shares in Symbian from its remaining shareholders and is releasing Symbian into the newly created Symbian Foundation, an open source oriented industry association which will govern future developments of the Symbian operating system. As Mark put it, this is the “best demonstration of [Nokia's] desire to move absolutely to an open … environment” and it is apparently the largest open source initiative to date.

I’d like to thank Mark and Tania Steenkamp from Nokia for this opportunity to chat to him and for his patience. As usual I ran over my allotted time for the interview and Mark just kept talking.

(Note: Mark mentioned that Nokia Maps 3.0 beta is available and I incorrectly said it wasn’t. The software is available here if you want to try it out)

Nokia’s S60/Symbian event on 25 March 2009

Symbian was the focus of Nokia’s S60 event in Sunninghill on 25 March which focussed on future Symbian developments and the much anticipated Nokia Ovi Store. A central theme at the event was Nokia’s commitment to open standards, largely through Symbian.

Nokia bought Symbian and is committed to giving it back to the world through the Symbian foundation. We have seen compatability across S60 versions and we should continue to see this although future Symbian developments will be determined by the Symbian Foundation which Nokia is part of but no longer the single largest driving force.

Nokia is conducting a fair amount of its cross-platform development using Qt which has been incorporated into Nokia’s R&D department. Its purchase was also part of the longer term plan to establish the Symbian Foundation. Nokia changed the license to the LGPL license. Using Qt, developers will be able to port applications to other platforms including Windows, Windows CE, Embedded Linux and Mac OSX using an SDK. Nokia also intends using Webkit as its Web runtime engine more and more. The main focus of Web runtime is widget platform and an example of a widget implementation platform is the N97 which will support widgets on the home screen.

There is a perception of the S60 platform as a dated platform partly due to the UI. I have heard this a number of times and I share this perception, to a degree. We were told that when it comes to the UI, Nokia aims for consistency and familiarity and the implication is that we probably won’t see sudden, radical changes to the UI largely for this reason.

The Ovi store is a business platform. It will contain more than just applications. It will also include video, personalisation, games, audio and flash channels. The store will “learn” from interaction with it and prioritise content you seem to prefer. All the content on the site will be available anywhere except where a country bans certain content and there will be both free and premium content. Nokia is targeting three categories of developers: the “money guys”, “uber techies” and “good samaritans”. Part of the Ovi store, while not an explicit component, is its social capability with community interaction. Developers will take 60% of the price of premium content and will decide on rights and licensing applicable to their apps.

The Nokia guys pointed out that Forum Nokia is probably the best resource for developers. I have posted some of the documents I received in Nokia’s press pack here. Included in there is background information about the Symbian Foundation.

Here is a video I put together from parts of the session:

Lunch with Brad Brockhaug

I was invited to have lunch with Brad Brockhaug, Nokia’s Head of Sub-Saharan Africa, together with a couple journalists, recently. The lunch was one of a number of similar “meet and greets” intended to help him and his team get to know the media better and provide a more open interface for Nokia in South Africa and elsewhere.

Brad talked about his background and about Nokia’s shift to a services focussed business model. He mentioned that Nokia sees Africa as an opportunity to test new solutions which could be used as models elsewhere. That appeals to me considerably. There are opportunities to leapfrog older technologies in Africa given the right regulatory framework.

He also talked about the importance of leveraging 3rd party developers or key providers on Nokia’s platforms by giving them the tools to develop on those platforms. The focus is more on allowing developers to develop on Nokia’s platforms and then working with operators to provide best consumer experience. Consumers will ultimately decide where to get their services.

Nokia’s Ovi Store is intended to be a more open platform and application store. It replaces Nokia’s Download service which Brad launched about 3 years ago. The Ovi Store is going to be a more controlled and moderated environment than the MOSH service which it will, in some ways, replace. Although the Ovi Store is not live yet, developers can upload their apps to publish.ovi.com in the meantime. Nokia’s goal is to have about 20 000 apps when the store launches. Nokia is aiming for a more relevant range of options rather than just having a catalogue of applications (there will be a catalogue available if you want it). Location awareness should also form part of the Store’s customisation process.

Brad also talked briefly about the Nokia music experience and the “Comes with Music” service. The Comes with Music service is an unlimited music tied to specific devices. There is no date set for the Comes with Music service just yet. One reason is that Nokia needs to select the right devices. He talked a bit about the complicated process of getting clearance rights from a multitude of rights holders to be able to release music in different countries in the context of the Music Store.

On the whole it is clear that Nokia is aiming to be more open. One thing that continues to impress me is Nokia’s willingness to talk about future developments and products. This is sorely lacking in other organisations like Google and Apple. It certainly makes it easy for me to be a fan of the company and what it is doing. It is also very useful to talk to people like Mark Selby and Brad Brockhaug about the complex issues Nokia has to deal with when it comes to services like the Music Store. I don’t like DRM very much at all but it is a complex issue and I believe Nokia is moving in the right direction.

Disclosure: I should point out that Nokia paid for my fancy lunch with Brad Brockhaug and lets me test out new devices from time to time. I am pretty much treated as media and some of the benefits that go with that. While it is great to have this attention I like to think I retain my objectivity and present the same views I would if I wasn’t treated so well. That being said I am a Nokia fan partly because of what I get to see at Nokia SA.

The Nokia N97 is probably one of the most anticipated phones of the year. It looks set to cross the gap between Nokia’s media oriented N series and the business oriented E series. If the N97 lives up to the hype, it could well be the answer to many prayers, including mine. Here is a demonstration which I hope is real-time because it gives you an idea what this device can do:

I have long wanted a single device to handle my daily personal and business tasks including media creation and consumption; web access and messaging. Unfortunately no single device has been up to the task (no, the iPhone doesn’t cut it). I think the N97 has the potential to be the closest to that single device. My ideal single device is the device I can -

• store and play my music, podcasts and videos;
• browse the Web using a standards compliant Web browser which allows me to shift between landscape and portrait modes for a better browsing experience;
• use for high speed data whether the device is tethered to my laptop or whether I use it standalone;
• productively use for a range of messaging requirements including email, sms, microblogging and instant messaging;
• make clear calls with (often underestimated – this is a phone after all);
• capture good quality photos and video on the fly without waiting for some application to load 30 seconds after the moment has passed;
• extend and expand with a range of quality software and hardware components; and
• generally get the information I need to do what I need to do in a given day

The N97’s capabilities are outlined in the N97 datasheet and there are a couple features that give me hope that this will be what I hope it will be for me. For one thing its camera is much better than my E71’s camera. It is a 5 megapixel camera with a Carl Zeiss Tessar lens which means I should be able to snap decent photos when I am out and about.

It has 32GB of onboard storage space and supports at least another 16GB through its microSD card slot. While it isn’t quite the 120GB of space I’d like to have to accommodate all my portable media, this does position the N97 as a viable alternative to my 60GB iPod when I am out and about. On that note the 3.5mm headphone jack means I don’t have to mess with the stupid 2.5mm jack my E71 was cursed with. It also means I can use my own headphones to listen to the content I load onto the device using Nokia’s Multimedia Transfer software (the latest version allows me to transfer specific playlists in iTunes so no need to mess around with special folders. Similar thing applies to my photos which I can transfer across from iPhoto and display on the 3.5 inch, 16:9 screen. It supports enough music formats to enable me to access my existing music collection and perhaps the only thing I’d like to add is a better video player than Realplayer. A biggie over the iPhone/iPod Touch is that the N97 (like my E71 and a number of other Nokia devices) will play Flash video and handle Flash elements. That means good YouTube playback for one thing!

Another bonus is that the N97 is not much bigger than my E71 (which, as you know, is pretty slim and a great form factor). That means I can slip it into my pocket without too much fuss. Here is a size comparison between the N97 and the upcoming E75:

Of course that means I have my office in my pocket too. Assuming Nokia extends Nokia Email to S60 5th Edition (the E71 runs 3rd Edition) I will have my email available to me as push email. I already handle a lot of my email on my E71 and the full keyboard on the N97 will make mail handling an even better experience. Of course there is also Twitter, more conventional blogging and other applications and activities that will benefit tremendously from the N97’s form factor and apparent capabilities. I would love to see what Nokia Maps and Google Maps look like on this device. That sort of map and routing data on the larger screen will make navigating with the N97 a dream. If it works reliably there won’t be much of a need for a dedicated GPS device either (at least not given my requirements).

My one concern is that the N97’s processor and other components are powerful enough to drive everything the N97 seems capable of without any significant lag or undermining the promised operating times of 320 minutes of talk time, 400 hours of standby time, 4.5 hours of video playback or 37 hours of music playback. The device also needs to support N-Gage games and that requires some power. This is where the device could well disappoint, at least disappoint me. I despised my Nokia N73 largely because it was so sluggish and unresponsive. The pain would be much worse having such a capable device moving at the speed of mud.

On the other hand, if the N97 performs like the “Fondle” video at the beginning of this device I will have little need for anything else for my day to day stuff. Forget about Netbooks, this device will do whatever I need it to do when I am mobile and don’t need the full apps and functionality of my MacBook. I can forget about my need for a higher capacity iPod Touch or a dedicated GPS device. It will be a good day when I turn my N97 on.

Update: I was just watching this video by the Phone Scoop people and you can see that the phone is pretty responsive when it comes to customising the home screen, web browsing and loading apps like the media player.

Fleishman-Hillard sent me a Nokia 5800 Xpress Music phone to review a couple weeks ago (thanks Lisa, Olga and Co.). I am uncharacteristically late with this review and I think it is partly because I am not as enthusiastic about this device as I am about other Nokia devices. There are a couple reasons for this and I’ll tell you about them before I tell you what I do like about the 5800.

Thumbs down

For starters I was disappointed in the build quality of the device compared to my E71. Granted they are in completely different classes and intended for very different target markets but I was expecting the 5800 to be a little more substantial and not as plasticky. It is a pretty lightweight device and seems to be about as big as a Nokia N73 Music Edition. In fact, when I first saw the device at the launch a while ago (Nokia’s General Manager, Mathia Nalappan, showed it to me and Saul Kropman before the event began), I thought it was an N73 from the back. When you turn it around you quickly realise this is like no other Nokia device you’ve used. As you have read (and noticed from the image to the right), this is a touchscreen device. Saul is ambivalent about the touchscreen (read his excellent review) but I like touchscreen devices. My wife as an iPod Touch and it is a pleasure to use (that being said, you can’t compare the 5800 to an iPod Touch or even an iPhone for that matter, Apple trumps Nokia when it comes to the 5800).

Another aspect of the device I don’t like is the battery cover. It is a flexible piece of plastic that extends over the whole of the back of the phone. Unlike other Nokia devices that have a release of some kind, you have to pull the battery cover away from the phone. The stylus is recessed inside the battery cover and that gives it some rigidity but I still felt like I was going to break the cover just pulling it away from the phone to get to the battery.

I watched a video (embedded below) the other day with footage from the phone’s launch in London about a month ago and roughly halfway through the video a Nokia store employee demonstrates the phone and comments that you can access the SIM card through a slot in the side of the phone. That isn’t really true. You can insert a SIM card through the slot on the side of the phone but you can’t remove it without opening the back of the phone and removing the battery like usual (there is a gap to use the stylus or similarly shaped device to push the SIM card out the slot). That being said, you probably won’t remove the SIM card very often so this isn’t a significant issue.

Thumbs up

For starters, here is the video from the London launch. The demonstration begins about halfway through the video and shows off some of the cool features of this phone:

I like the touchscreen because I like the possibilities for touchscreens as input interfaces. The 5800 makes use of the touchscreen in a number of ways include a variety of input options (mini-qwerty, full sized qwerty, handwriting recognition and the stylus/plectrum). Unlike the button press sensation on some devices and the lack of any feedback on the iPod Touch/iPhone, the device vibrates when you access the touchscreen on the 5800. I’d rather have a localised sensation where I touch the device but some kind of feedback is better than none. At least I know when the device is registering something.

Web browsing on the device is more pleasant that on my E71. Being able to switch to landscape mode means more screen space for web browsing and less squinting. On that subject, the phone switches pretty smoothly between landscape and portrait modes when you turn the device around. I do a fair amount of web browsing on my E71 so using the 5800 for this was a pleasure.

I didn’t use the 5800 as my day to day device (I only had it for a week and couldn’t bring myself to stop using my E71) so I can’t comment on its utility day to day. I do have a strong sense that is not a device designed for people like me who use their phones for a lot of messaging and business stuff. This is a fun device, not a business and messaging device even though it supports pretty much the same services I use on my E71.

As its name suggests, this is a music device. It has a decent camera (3.2 megapixels with autofocus and Carl Zeiss optics) which is much better than my E71’s. Below are two images I took to give you an idea how the two cameras compare:

Nokia 5800 Xpress

and

Nokia E71

I also shot video clips using both devices to compare their relative qualities. The first you will notice is that their aspect ratios are different:

and

The E71 has this terrible blue tinge to imagery taken with its camera and that makes it a distant 2nd choice when I need to take photos or shoot video. The 5800 at least takes decent photos and video which makes it a viable option for casual stuff. There are a couple photos of the E71 alone and with my E71 for comparison purposes here.

Where the 5800 does well is its music player. The player itself is pretty basic but the sound quality is fantastic, especially for such a small device. Its little speakers put out quite a bit of sound and it barely distorts when you turn up the volume.

The 8GB card it comes with places it on a par with an iPod nano in terms of storage space and I thought about taking the phone along to gym with me instead of my iPod a couple times (I didn’t because I was a little nervous about losing/damaging it. The 3.5mm headphone jack it has should be in every Nokia device that has a music player. The half-assed 2.5mm headphone jack in my E71 rules it out as an optional podcast/music player when I am out and about. This isn’t a problem with the 5800 and I can easily see the 5800 becoming its users’ all-in-one choice largely for this reason.

I haven’t gone into a lot of detail here so I recommend that you read Saul’s review too. If I were a casual user who saw his phone as a phone and likes the idea of having a decent music player built into it, this device would be an excellent choice. It is light, flexible, has pretty good media capability and is a pretty funky looking device.

This is not a device for me, however. I was a better built device that feels solid in my hands and which will be better suited for messaging (a keyboard is a good start). I would like to have a bigger screen than my E71 gives me for all my Web-based activities and I see the N97 as being closer to what I ideally would like to have in a mobile device. At the same time Nokia never said the 5800 is for someone like me but it may well be the device for you.

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Fleishman-Hillard and Nokia South Africa invited me to attend the launch of the Nokia 5800 Xpress music phone at Movida in Sunninghill last week Thursday. The media event began at about 6:30pm with presentations by a few Nokia executives (in order of appearance):

1. Brad Brockhaug – Vice President – Nokia Sub-Sahara Africa
2. Mathia Nalappan – General Manager – Nokia South Africa
3. Patrick Henchie – Program Manager – Nokia South Africa
4. Jake Larsen – Head of Music – Nokia Middle East and Africa

We were also promised an evening of music and entertainment care of two DJs, our very own Mark Pilgrim and the sexiest DJ in the world (its her tagline, really), Colleen Shannon.

Here is a video of the event featuring the presentations we received and a couple videos Nokia produced (A better quality version of the video is available on Blip.tv if you are not bothered by a large file size):

Brad Brockhaug, literally fresh off the plane from New York, kicked off the media event with his overview of the Ovi suite and the many avenues Nokia is pursuing in South Africa. These avenues include rolling out its music services in South Africa.

I want to raise a longstanding concern I have about what Nokia is doing in this space and generally before I move on to the more positive things to come out of the event. One of the videos I inserted into my video of the event is Nokia’s “We are playlist people” music video. The video implies that Nokia users can remix music and share it with their friends. I found this both amusing and ironic because Nokia’s video resembles a Creative Commons video called “Building on the Past“. Creative Commons licenses are almost the antithesis of the licensing regime Nokia has adopted for its music store. Nokia music is heavily DRM’d at the moment and remixing that music would be a copyright violation. The slogan “Your music. Your way.” sounds great but this is misleading.

Nokia’s approaches to DRM and platforms other than Windows bugs me as a Nokia fan and as an open access advocate. While I understand the reasons for these approaches, as I understand them, I believe that Nokia is doing itself and its fans a great disservice in the process. Anyway, I wrote in my interview with Mathia Nalappan a short while ago, the music store is only going to be available to Windows Media Player/Internet Explorer users on the desktop. The rest of us will have to stick to our mobile phones (we won’t be alone: Jake Larsen revealed that 35% of the people who access the Nokia Music Store worldwide do so via mobile access, a third via wifi or 3G).

When asked about DRM, Jake Larsen confirmed that Nokia is committed to going DRM-free in 2009. I did ask Mathia Nalappan why Nokia didn’t go DRM-free in the first place and the answer boils down to the music industry and its licensing requirement. The fact that Nokia is committed to going DRM-free is obviously significant. Nokia has been described as the top computer manufacturer in the world if you consider that its smartphones are really computers. The shifting emphasis to mobile instead of laptops and desktops places Nokia in an enviable position and making music available more widely could well place it alongside the likes of Apple and Wallmart when it comes to music sales. Opening its software up to other operating systems will only make it more appealing to an even broader audience.

Anyway, back to the fun stuff. Nokia promises a total music experience beginning largely with the local Nokia music store which is due to go live in SA on 24 April 2009. Fans will be able to move music between their phones and a Windows PC. The content presented on the music store will be locally relevant content. User preferences will be analysed and preferred content will be prioritised on the store. This means a lot more content specifically geared for a South African audience and this should only drive adoption. The pricing model for music downloads hasn’t been decided on yet and this will obviously have a significant impact on how quickly South Africans embrace the service. One idea is to give music packages to phone owners depending on phone. Another is the now traditional price per track/album (although Larsen mentioned pricing based on the UK store which is somewhat more expensive that competitors like the iTunes store which is also expected to launch more fully in South Africa this year). I like the music store’s clean interface too. For a change it doesn’t attempt to copy iTunes too closely. The store will be available at music.nokia.com when it launches.

Windows users will also be able to install Nokia’s music software (I believe Tania Steenkamp, Nokia’s Communication Manager for South and Southern Africa mentioned something about a possible Mac client soon). Nokia devices can sync with iTunes on the Mac using the Media Transfer software at the moment too.

When it comes to the Nokia 5800 Xpress itself, there are a number of appealing features (click on the link for a full datasheet).

(apologies for the quality, I shot this with my Nokia E71)

The most obvious is that it is a touch screen phone. There is no experience of pushing a button like the Blackberry Storm but there is a vibration effect to let you know you are doing something on the screen. The contacts bar is a nice touch too. It integrates options and information about more recent contacts into one convenient experience. There are a couple input options ranging from a landscape and portrait oriented on-screen keyboard which you can make use of with your fingers, a stylus and a plectrum (very music!). You can also use text recognition which we were told will learn your handwriting.

People tend to compare the 5800 Xpress with the iPhone or the iPod Touch. I don’t think this is accurate at all. The 5800 Xpress is a smartphone, true, but the emphasis is on its music and media functionality. It also lacks the advanced features and software the iPod Touch/iPhone enjoy so comparing it to Apple’s devices is only setting the 5800 Xpress up for failure. If you are going to compare a Nokia device to the iPhone, wait for the N97 (due out in the next few months).

It is obvious that Nokia is serious about music and its other services which it has and will be introducing under its Ovi brand. Many of Ovi’s services are already available to us down south and I think we will see Ovi emerge as a serious competitor to other similar services in the near future. The interfaces and functionality still feel a little raw to me at the moment but then I tend to be picky when faced with the choices I have on or through my Mac and elsewhere. As an aside, another area Nokia is serious about is mapping and location based information. I think we will see some interesting developments there too going forward (at least I hope so – mainly I just want Nokia Maps to be more reliable on my E71!).

Nokia put on quite an impressive event. I had a great time chatting to Saul Kropman and Chris Onderstall in particular.

Here is a slideshow from the photos I took at the event.

Included in this slideshow are photos of Colleen Shannon. I didn’t get to hear her music set but I did enjoy the beginning of Mark Pilgrim’s set which he played using two 5800s.

Thanks again to Fleishman-Hillard and Nokia for inviting me to the event. I got a kick out of the press kit, by the way, very cool.

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mathia nalappan, nokia, nokia south africa, nokia 5800 Xpress, nokia music store, 5800 Xpress, colleen shannon, mark pilgrim

I got a kick out of this video on YouTube. It is a video of Trent Reznor signing the first of the 2 500 deluxe, superduper editions of Ghosts I-IV. The video is titled “Spend the day with us: Watch this 2500 times.”:

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albums, ghosts, nin, nine inch nails, autograph, trent reznor

So says Bev “Feisty Female”:

If you haven’t heard about the Rocking the Daisies Music Festival you’ve been hiding under the wrong rock! Now in its third year, this is the coolest festival by far and the fact that it’s eco-friendly to boot, is commendable. (Their pay-off line is PARTY HARD, TREAD LIGHTLY.)

Bev’s question for a couple people (myself included) is what I would take along to this eco-friendly music festival. These are the five things I would take along:

1. My mobile phone for updates;
2. My camera for stills and short videos to be edited and posted later;
3. Possibly my MacBook (although I tend to go a little light at these sorts of events);
4. Sunglasses, sun cream and maybe even a hat; and
5. My iPod (I know it is a music festival but my iPod has my own personal music festival for those moments when I need some familar inspiration (the iPod would probably necessitate the MacBook to charge up and sync).

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feisty female, feistyfemale, rocking the daisies, bev, eco friendly