At the Nokia Music Connects press event in Mumbai on Wednesday, the company launched its Nokia Music Store for India, which will offer over three million international and Hindi film and regional soundtracks across all genres.
Nokia vice president, music Elizabeth Schimel added, “With over three million tracks, India Music Store will have the most diverse portfolios of content, covering 20 genres and almost 90 per cent of the local music in India.”
In a perplexing decision, as of now, users can’t actually buy songs off the service using credit cards or money of any sort. The entire usage is dependent upon vouchers included in the retail packages of select Nokia devices, such as the entire XpressMusic line-up, N97, N86, E71, E63 and a few others. What’s the point of having a store that you can’t buy stuff from?
Anyway, the Nokia Music Store can be accessed through your cell phone or directly through your desktop using the Nokia Music client. You can access the entire store, browse through tracks, search by artists and genres, create your wish list and download songs from the store. Once you connect your Nokia phone to the PC, it will automatically sync up the two devices’ music collections.
‘Free’ is a word we like a lot and Nokia is going to be giving us a few free tracks every week for download. Nice idea, that!
Also, before downloading any song, you can listen to a small 30-second preview of it, which is a nice feature for audiophiles picky about the quality of encoding, as well as those who like to experiment with new tunes.
Nokia has tied up with international music labels such as Universal Music Group, Sony Music, EMI and Warner and independent Indian record labels including T-Series, Yash Raj Music, Saregama, BIG Music and Venus. The company has also partnered with Indian Music Industry (IMI), a consortium of over 150 music companies.
Nokia India managing director D Shivakumar said, “Music is a very local experience and that is why the India Music Store has content from Oscar winner AR Rahman to the golden voice of yesteryear’s KL Saigal, from South’s Yesudas to East’s Bhupen Hazarika, along with the international majors. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the entire music industry and our esteemed partners for helping the Music Store come alive for the Indian consumers.”