Nokia Music+ brings "unlimited downloads" for £3.40/mth

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 28 Jan 2013 at 08:55

Nokia has unveiled details of its Nokia Music+ service, which will give Lumia handset owners "unlimited music downloads" for as little as £3.40 per month.

Nokia Music+ is an extension of the free Music app that's available on all Lumia handsets, which allows users to listen to automatically generated playlists based around certain artists or genres.

The paid-for service will bring a selection of enhanced features, including "unlimited" downloads of these mixes for offline listening, as well as the option to skip to the next track in the mix as many times as you like. Music+ will also provide the option to download tracks at "eight times the existing quality", according to Nokia's blog post, although it doesn't stipulate the exact bitrate.

Paying customers will also be able to listen to music through a web interface that Nokia claims will work on PCs, tablets or smart TVs.

Perhaps the most attractive thing about Nokia Music+ is the price, with a monthly fee of only €3.99 (around £3.40). That compares well against rival services such as Spotify, which charges £9.99 per month for its mobile app, although Spotify is much more flexible - it allows users to play individual tracks and albums on demand, and generate their own playlists. Nokia Music+ is similar to Spotify's Radio feature, although the latter doesn't allow you to download mixes for offline listening.

Nokia Music+ will launch in the next few weeks.

It's not the first time Nokia has attempted to differentiate its phone with music. Its last service, Comes with Music, allowed unlimited downloads to a registered phone, but the tracks couldn't be transferred elsewhere. It was shut down in 2011.