Nokia introduced a free, mobile-optimized music streaming service in America, which it is celebrating with a Green Day concert in New York. Based on the Rollingstone.com reports, this Nokia Music service is available on the company's Lumia devices and it offers the same sort of standard features as most phone music players (a loadable music library and an MP3 store), as well as an interesting new way to stream music.
Without having to give over credit-card information, forking over an email address or enduring time- and bandwidth-sucking ads, Nokia Music will start playing quality-sounding music - including custom playlists programmed by the likes of Lady Gaga, Rihanna and Pearl Jam - with one or two clicks. It also offers a GPS-enabled "Gig Finder," which will tell users which bands are playing concerts from any location. It's all part of a concerted effort that Nokia made to simplify the process of accessing music.
The company launched Nokia Music in the UK and some European countries in November 2011, and the company has since made it available in dozens of countries including China, India and its native Finland. To make the service work for the United States, the company hired a team of American music specialists to tweak the specialized genres and playlists. "For example, in Finland, there are a lot of people who like heavy metal," Rosenberg says. "So we have a category here called Viking Metal. That probably wouldn't work as well in the U.S." Instead, the American version offers pop, hip-hop, country and even a fitness channel, as well as many other options that the company refreshes weekly, including one that covers rock and metal (so stateside head-bangers still have an option). The service also offers what Rosenberg calls a "Pandora-like feature" in which users can select up to three artists and it will build an automatic playlist based on them. Nokia also allows music fans to download up to four channels - also for free - to the device for use offline, such as when flying or riding a subway.
The app also features custom-programmed playlists by celebrities. Lady Gaga's list features songs by some artists you'd expect (Madonna's "Hung Up," Pink's "Funhouse") as well as some surprises (Judas Priest's "A Touch of Evil," Saxon's "Power and the Glory"). Some of the other artists stick to the sorts of music you might expect them to listen to (Rihanna's list features TLC, Drake and Katy Perry, among others, while Lana Del Rey's offers Brenda Lee, the Beach Boys and Springsteen). [IS]
