Nokia now has three of the Big Four labels signed on for its upcoming “Comes With Music” service, which is expected to launch later this year. EMI hasn’t signed up yet, but apparently it is planning to. Although the terms of the deals are unknown, Nokia has reportedly paid the record companies millions of dollars for the right to offer some of their songs for download, and will build some of that cost into the price of Nokia handsets. Not surprisingly, Warner boss Edgar Bronfman Jr. is full of visionary enthusiasm for the project:
“Nokia’s Comes With Music service will be a significant step forward in the evolution of digital music. It’s the first global initiative to fundamentally align the interests of music companies with telecommunications companies.”
Who knows, maybe this time all of Edgar Jr.’s pronouncements about a revolutionary step in digital media will actually come true — unlike, say, his similar pronouncements about the benefits of a merger between Seagram and French media conglomerate Vivendi, a deal that would eventually vaporize billions of dollars in shareholder value, along with a substantial chunk of his Montreal-based family fortune. But let’s not dwell on that. And I’m also not going to mention how Edgar has repeatedly pledged that he has “gotten religion” about the need for progress in the music industry, only to repeatedly demonstrate the exact opposite whenever it comes time to actually do something.