Close on the heels of announcing new Windows Phone 8-based Lumia 920 and Lumia 820 smartphones in an event in New York, Nokia has launched yesterday a free music streaming service – Nokia Music for US customers with its Lumia handsets without ads. It is expected that the new Lumia phones to be launched today will also get access to the Nokia Music service. Consumers who already own a Nokia Lumia 900 or Nokia Lumia 710 can download the Nokia Music app for free from Marketplace.
According to Nokia, Lumia users can not only stream millions of songs, but will also have access to over 150 exclusive playlists that are curated and kept up to date by an expert team of US based musicologists. Nokia said users of its devices can create their own “personal soundtrack” by creating playlists based on preferred artists. For maximum convenience, Nokia Music playlists can also be enjoyed offline so consumers can listen to their favorite playlists anytime, anywhere.
“The USA is the most vibrant and competitive digital music market in the world — by a wide margin. We have worked extra hard to ensure our service meets the expectations of the demanding, active and inspired music fans in the USA. I would like to challenge everyone to try Nokia Music and see just how easy and enjoyable the service is to use,” said Jyrki Rosenberg, Nokia’s vice president of entertainment.
Nokia’s Music Service is already available in other countries for quite sometime and is coming to US for the first time. This is another attempt by Nokia to get some traction in smartphone market which curently is being dominated by Android smartphones especially of Samsung and of Apple’s iOS iPhone. Nokia was late entrant to smartphone arena with Lumia range of devices on Windows platform and has not been able to achieve the desired results. It is hoped that its new range of Lumia Windows 8 phones will get wider acceptability and will revive the company’s fortunes.
