Nokia Comes with Music - a 'private' music flat rate and music as the social glue

Nokia has announced that it is launching their Comes with Music (CmW) offering in the UK, Engadget reports. With 2.1 Million tracks from 3 of the 4 companies 'formerly known as major record labels', DRM'ed but without expiration date. Regardless of the obvious bummers (where are the indie labels, and why DRM?) I find this offer to be a very interesting step-up-the-ladder towards the Music Flat Rate that I have been describing for the past 5 years (lately, in my new book, Music 2.0... download the free PDF now!).

In a way, just like Google is doing in China, Nokia is using music as the social glue, i.e. to make sure people stick with their Nokia devices and receive lots of added value which imho is a really valid marketing strategy for Nokia - but of course not an overall solution to the vast music ecosystem problems; that will require the controling entities to get with the program, first.  In reality - even though the handsets will be a bit more expensive than usual I would guess - it is Nokia that will pay for the music so that people will in turn love them (and their phones) even more. Music Like Water paid for by the Faucet Makers, so to speak. Let's see where this goes!

Update: Elliot over at Wired Blog has another good take on this, Techmeme has more cool links
Disclosure: Nokia is one of my thinktank clients