Crossing the Blues

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Carphone Warehouse announces unlimited download Nokia PAYG 'Comes With Music' phone

The big news may be about the Tube but the Carphone Warehouse and Nokia have packaged together a rather intriguing proposition for those of the pay-as-you-go persuasion. The deal is they sell you a Nokia 5310 XpressMusic handset for £129.95 and you get not only the phone,but also unlimited access to the Comes With Music service for a year. In fact, I think I demonstrated it rather well in the picture. There's the £129.95 in pink, next to the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic phone which, as you can see, "comes with" a pile of CDs representing "music". And that's all at the Carphone Warehouse or at least on the forecourt of the head office.
The deal hits the insides of the blue-branded iPhone stores on 16th October and, even after your 12 months expire, you still get to keep all the music you've downloaded. Of course, it'll be DRM-ed up to the eye-balls but there you go. Anyway, at least you can enjoy it from the comfort of your own PC.
The good news is that the 5310 XpressMusic will come in a choice of eight colours, the bad news is that you still have to pay for all your phone calls.
Now, the part I'm trying to figure out is can you take the music to another Nokia phone when you're done and if that's the case, does that mean you can do it immediately? So, infact, can you lay out the £129.95, sell the handset for the £80 RRP and have yourself year-long, unlimited access to the Nokia Music Store on an N96 or another contract Nokia of your choice for £50? Because that sounds quite good.