Nokia expected to launch Comes With Music today

By Nate Lanxon on 02 October 2008, 11:49am

Crave is expecting Nokia to unveil its Comes With Music service to the world later today, launching on a Nokia 5310 XpressMusic handset, and possibly on the N95 8GB, too.

Comes With Music is Nokia's plan to offer unlimited music downloads to mobile phones, with the cost of each track built into the price initially paid for the phone, thereby appearing 'free' to the end user.

Over two million songs will be available for the snagging, and the songs should be yours to keep -- coated in cancerous DRM, naturally -- after the 12 months of Comes With Music service bundled with the handset expires.

It's not clear whether 'unlimited downloads' will truly mean 'unlimited free downloads', however. The Guardian's Helienne Lindvall has reported a frankly pathetic 120-song limit. Not per day, not even per month -- per year. Nokia has yet to announce official download restrictions, if indeed any exist.

We expect Lindvall to be correct, however, or at least pretty damn close on the money, as history is replete with offers of 'unlimited' service transpiring to be, in fact, very limited indeed, or at least bound by 'fair use' policies.

One of us here at Crave has even asked the Oxford English Dictionary to change the official definition of 'unlimited' to avoid future confusion as a result of the telecoms industry abusing the word.

We'll have more from Comes With Music as the week progresses, once Nokia officially unveils the service. -Nate Lanxon