Author: Stuart Dredge
Universal Music Group gives more details on Nokia's 'Comes With Music' service
The talk of today’s Nokia World Show is ‘Comes With Music’, the freshly announced partnership between Nokia and Universal Music Group, which will be a subscription based music download service.
Rob Wells, senior vice president for digital at UMG, got up on stage this afternoon to explain the thinking behind the deal, and gave some more details.
Get yourself a 3D mobile secretary
One of the more eyecatching mobile applications on show at Nokia World today is called Mobile Secretary, from Chinese firm InterGrafx. It’s basically a 3D avatar that acts as your virtual secretary, residing on your phone.
Nokia Ovi is shaping up for a fight with Google
Nokia’s multimedia supremo Anssi Vanoki showed off the company’s new Ovi service at Nokia World today, demonstrating how it’ll work on PCs, online and on mobile handsets. My takeaway thought is this: everyone bangs on about Nokia taking on Apple and its iPhone, but with Ovi, Nokia seems to be setting its sights at Google.
Nokia launches Come With Music unlimited download service
If you read my Digital Music Trends post yesterday, you’ll know about Total Music, an idea cooked up by major label Universal Music Group that involved mobile handset manufacturers and MP3 player makers paying a monthly subscription to the labels, to give their users free, unlimited music downloads.
Well, Nokia’s gone and done it. At least, I think they have.
Nokia boss: “Expect us to take more risks”
Nokia chief Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo kicked off this year’s Nokia World conference, on a whopping 47-metre-wide stage that over the next couple of days will hopefully see at least one speaker do a Mick Jagger and prance its length while hollering into a radio mic. Steve Ballmer would love it.
Anyway, Kallasvuo was on stage to talk Big Picture stuff, explaining Nokia’s overall strategy and vision. And cor, Kallasvuo mentioned the iPhone (by name) within a couple of minutes of taking the stage. He’s feeling confident, then, buoyed by Nokia’s prediction that there’ll be 3.2 billion mobile subscribers by the end of this year.
Hello Kitty vibrator finally goes on sale in the UK
What to do if you’re a big fan of Hello Kitty with an aching shoulder? Well, you’ll be needing this Hello Kitty Shoulder Massager then. It costs £24.99, comes in four colours (pink, lilac, red and black, since you ask), and is available from UK website LoveHoney.
30 Trends in Digital Music: 6-10
It’s time for the second in our series of posts looking at the big trends in digital music – an area that Tech Digest has been covering more and more this year. Today’s set of five include choose-your-own pricing, USB music sticks, record labels taking on iTunes, gnarly old bands getting webby, and the potential of Joost and online TV for music.
Nokia launches Nokia Internet Radio, streaming to your phone
Nokia has announced another new mobile music service to join its existing Nokia Music Store. This time, it’s a streaming radio service called Nokia Internet Radio, which brings the best internetweb stations direct to your handset.
30 Trends in Digital Music: 1-5
The world of digital music is an exciting place, whether you’re a record label, a band or a music fan. 2007 has seen huge amounts of activity, including DRM-free downloads, social network widgets, the rise of mobile music, Radiohead’s choose-your-own-price album, recommendation services, personal online radio, video karaoke sites, and the first trials of free music funded by advertising.
Top 10 reasons NOT to ask for gadgets this Christmas
Pre-Christmas fever is about to get into full swing in UK high streets – this weekend, I saw my first dancing/singing Santa mannequin of the year in Argos, while several other shops are rolling out their Winter Wonderland compilation CDs already.
