3UK to Bring Comes With Music

Nokia launched its “pioneering” Comes With Music service on October 2, at the same time with the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. According to the announcement, the service was to be made available first in the United Kingdom, starting October 16, 2008, at Carphone Warehouse via the pre-paid 5310 XpressMusic phone.

For those of you who don't know what the Comes With Music service does, we'll fill you in right now. Nokia presented the service as a new way to discover and enjoy music, Comes With Music allowing users to explore a diverse catalog of music containing both international and local artists, with unlimited access to millions of tracks for a year. However, the best part about it is that users get to keep the music once the year is over, thus the service can be seen as truly revolutionizing their digital music experience. Basically, users are offered unlimited music downloads.

In this case, the service being made available for pre-paid users seems a bit weird. This is because only a subscription provides plenty of Internet traffic at a low cost. What happened here is that Nokia tried to get UK's four major operators, Vodafone, O2, T-Mobile and Orange, to offer clients its Comes With Music handsets but, as it turns out, the mobile carriers fear that the new service might end up cannibalizing their own music offerings. This is where 3 UK comes in.

The British carrier 3 UK has only 3 million customers, four times less than Orange, but it seems willing to take a chance with the service and, at the same time, see if the handsets could lure in more subscribers. Even if both Nokia and 3 UK have declined to comment on the story so far, according to what inside sources are saying, this offer should be available starting next month. One more thing that should be mentioned is that the mobile carrier will seemingly deliver the Comes With Music service along with the Nokia N95.