Nokia To Use Microsoft Digital Music Software

BCMM writes "From an article on Reuters: 'The world's largest mobile phone maker, Nokia, and software giant Microsoft struck a deal on Monday to make it easier for consumers to buy digital music on-line and play it back on their handsets ... Nokia agreed to put Microsoft's music player software into its handsets.'" (The BBC covers the deal as well.) "The articles don't mention what sort of DRM or licensing will be involved." jfanning writes "Two new Series 60 phones were also announced that ship soon and support WMA, the 6680 and 6681. I haven't seen it mentioned clearly yet, but also the Media Transfer Protocol has been licenced, so that could mean the phone will show up as a media device in Windows Media 10." jfanning mentions also that Nokia has licensed the Microsoft Exchange Server ActiveSync protocol for business phones.

Comments

Yay! WMA on my phone!

[Augusto]

Now I can unwittingly download the latest spyware!

Where's my stream?

[EspressoMachine]

I want my mobile to be able to stream music. And for that matter, I also want my car stereo to be able to receive streaming audio. Downloading is so yesterday, who wants to pay per song? As a Rhapsody subscriber, I'd love to access my playlists through my phone or my car - Get on it, guys!

Interesting

[Joshua53077]

It does make sense that the media companies (i.e. MS, Apple, Napster, etc.) are trying to lock up license agreements with cell phone makers but why wouldn't these companies go after the cell phone providers instead? I mean, if Apple came up with an agreement with Verizon to be their exclusive provider of music, wouldn't it force the cell phone makers to engineer apple's DRM and iTunes into their future phones? And put another way, if I were a cell phone carrier, wouldn't I want a piece of the action and the opportunity to control media standards?

Because after all, we all love...

[Tackhead]

> struck a deal on Monday to make it easier for consumers to buy digital music on-line and play it back on their handsets ...

...aah, in rapture to Beethoven's Ninth, compressed to a 32kbps mono .WMV, gloriously rendered on a tinny piezoelectric speaker.

Turning phones into music rental devices seems to fall under the "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should" category.

Even if you stuck a headphone jack into your phone to get around the shitty piezo speaker problem, consider that if you actually plan to use your phone for something (oh, I don't know, say, talking on it?), why would you want to wear down its battery by playing music on it?

Microsoft? Open Standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft will introduce open standards for digital music compression and piracy protection in its Media Players for personal computers

HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! HA! (sniff - wipes tears from eyes)
Microsoft supporting open standards. (snort) Now, that's funny!

Duh

[dsmitchell1]

Your car already has streaming audio. It's called radio!

WMP10 is for PC - NOT phone

[4r0g]

The reuters story isn't really in line with the actual press releases.

It does not say that Nokia is licensing Windows Media Player for phones, rather the technologies underneath, such as WMA, for achieving better interoperability with the PC. WMP10 is used as the PC frontend for the music solution they just launched.

There's going to be "support for Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) digital rights management and the MPEG Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) family of codecs in Windows Media Player via a plug-in" too to support the service.