Nokia Re-Badging Comes With Music to be Part of Ovi!

Nokia are giving the rather tired looking, and underperforming, Comes With Music service a rebrand. The new service will be known as "Ovi Music Unlimited" as a pert of Nokia Ovi. The trouble is though that that is just about all Nokia have done ... change the name. One of the biggest criticisms of Comes With Music was the harsh DRM lockdown in use, which meant that you had to download music to a registered PC and a single registered handset where there would be license checking in order for the music to actually play. None of that is changing with the 'new' service so you will still be limited in how you listen to the music. It's not really in keeping with the spirit of the term 'unlimited' in the title now is it?

On the plus side Nokia are saying that they will make it easier to search for and download the music. That was another criticism many had of the old Comes With service, the UI being not very nice to work with on mobile devices. Improving the UI will at least be a step in the right direction, but the DRM is probably still going to be a major turn-off for many. It's not as if there is no precedent for Nokia offering DRM free music, their Comes With Music service in China is DRM free so why not the rest of the world?