Nokia seeks music fans who don't like music

There's a lovely Pearls Before Swine strip where Rat takes revenge on a restaurant who upsets him by attending their All You Can Eat buffet and eating everything on it. The joke being that nobody actually expects someone to turn up for an All You Can Eat service and actually eat everything in sight.

Nokia must be hoping that their customers aren't going to turn out to be like Rat, as it seems they've cut the world's worst deal with Universal and Sony BMG. The handset manufacturer pays a fixed rate to allow its customers to download as much music as they'd like. We've been saying for a few weeks now that sounds like a poor deal for the labels, but what we didn't know was the labels thought so, too. With visions of Rats emptying their libraries, the labels told Nokia it must pay wholesale rates for any downloads beyond a certain number.

That number was ruinously low thirty-five tracks. Yes, if their customers choose to download more than a couple of hefty album's worth of songs, Nokia are going to have to start paying out. And, since it's not costing them anything, chances are their customers will think "I don't really like U2, but I might as well download everything they've ever done." Nokia have left themselves horribly over-exposed. Ed Averdieck, , Managing Director of Nokia Music has been given the chance to seek out new opportunities in the business world while Tommi Mustonen is being forced by his bosses to try and negotiate the company's way out of the mess. That should be easy, Tommi. The RIAA are known for their reasonable behaviour.