Legal
music download sites have finally received the
licences to bring tunes to mobile devices the
UAE
“There are only two record stores left in the
US,” proclaimed will.i.am, founding member of
the Black Eyed Peas, at London’s Koko club
earlier this month. “A Virgin Megastore in New
York and a Virgin Megastore in Los Angeles.”
It’s an exaggeration, for sure - my research
tells me there’s also one in Orlando - but
there’s no denying the traditional record store
has been hit hard by the advent of downloadable
digital media, which has seen music lovers get
hold of their favourite tracks on the internet,
often without paying a penny.
And now will.i.am, a guest of Finnish
communications giant Nokia, was helping to deal
another blow to the old industry heavyweights.
Or was he? As digital music has taken command,
the major record labels have been forced to
adopt an oft-preached philosophy: “If you can’t
beat ‘em, join ‘em.”
Music retailers in the UAE - Virgin Megastore
included - have been somewhat insulated from the
side of the digital music revolution with the
potential to harm their business. They do well
on iPod sales, and since you can’t buy from
Apple's popular iTunes store with a
UAE-registered credit card, they probably still
do well on CD sales too. Legally purchasing and
downloading music online within the UAE itself
has been problematic... until now.
Getmo Arabia (www.getmo.com), a joint venture
between Arvato Middle East and the Abu Dhabi
Media Company, went live on October 19 with one
million downloads on offer. And late last month,
Nokia announced it was launching an online music
download portal especially for the UAE in
December.
The reason it needs a UAE store - the reason
people can’t just visit one of the 11 existing
Nokia music stores or purchase from rival iTunes
over here - is all to do with rights.
“The key thing is that the licences you get from
the content providers, whether that’s the label
or the publisher, are territory-specific,” David
Williams, Nokia’s director of music service
content and business operations, told 7DAYS in
London. “You have to have the licences to be
able to sell that music in that territory.”
With Nokia and Getmo having gone further than
Apple and got all the necessary licences in
place, music is finally on sale online.
Nokia said its users can pay per download of a
track or a monthly subscription - in dirhams,
meaning the whole ‘UAE-registered credit card’
thing, dismissed by Williams as “a technical
issue” is not going to pose a problem.
All four major international music labels - EMI,
Warner, UMG and Sony - are on board for the UAE
launch, but for Williams the idea of having a
local portal goes beyond the rights aspect. “We
want local UAE content in the UAE,” he said,
plegding to make the store as “relevant as
possible”.
To this end, Nokia has also signed up Saudi
Prince Al-Waleed’s Rotana Records, the Middle
East’s largest label and a vast source of Arabic
music, and on announcing the store also promised
Bollywood content and “thousands of independent
labels”.
“It will be in the plan for the UAE store to
have a good selection of what local means to the
local population,” said Williams.
Not content with a single arrow to the core of
Apple’s business with a twelfth music store,
Nokia has completed a double-pronged assault on
Steve Jobs’ firm with a new slick handset that
has been touted by the media as a serious rival
to the iPhone, both versions of which are still
not available for purchase in the UAE.
Known as the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, the phone
is the company’s first mass-market device to
feature a touchscreen.
Nokia had gone to the trouble of flying
journalists half way around the world to London
to show off its new toy, which will be available
in the UAE in December for around $300. But that
wasn’t the only product will.i.am, Williams et
al were promoting.
The UK is the first market for Nokia’s ‘Comes
With Music’ scheme, under which for a period of
one year, unlimited access to Nokia’s music
library can be included in the price of selected
new handsets, including the 5800 XpressMusic.
The most basic, though, is the Nokia 5310
XpressMusic, which ‘comes with music’ for £130
and went on sale in the UK on October 16. And
users can keep the music downloaded even after
the year is up.
Nokia hopes it will be able to spread the ‘Comes
With Music’ concept around the world in due
course, though separate licensing issues will
have to be considered.
“Our strategy is that we establish ourselves in
a particular territory with these
pay-per-download stores,” Williams explained.
“Those are compatible with a huge number of
Nokia devices that have digital rights
management technologies. Once those have been
developed and we have the planning in place,
‘Comes With Music’ in general will follow as a
secondary level for those stores.”
With Apple out of the picture, both Getmo and
Nokia’s music.nokia.ae portal look set to be a
hit with UAE music fans. Nokia remains
tight-lipped about how much of Apple’s market
share it has eaten into since launching its
music store in the UK around one year ago but
reported that 35 per cent of people were
downloading direct to mobiles, not via PCs.
And if handsets really are the future for music,
the record labels might want to pay close
attention to the ‘Comes With Music’ progress.
After all, any sale means guaranteed royalties
for them in a lump sum.
“If we were to make something like nine per cent
of our music devices ‘Comes With Music’ devices,
the music industry could equal the overall
digital music revenue it earned last year,”
Williams claimed.
“That’s why the record labels and publishers
want to work with us on so many things. They see
the opportunity of scale here and understand
that as we take devices into the market, they
benefit from that scale. It’s an enormous
opportunity to reverse the decline in their
music sales.”
For more information visit www.music.nokia.com
