Saturday, October 18, 2008

Comes with confusion: Nokia claim there's no 120 song limit

The story of Nokia's Comes With Music deal gets even more tortuous: The Times Mousestrap blog asked Nokia if it was true there was a cap of 120 tracks on users. Unlike back in September when The Guardian asked, and Nokia gave a vague response, Nokia are now denying there's any limit at all:

Once you have bought a Nokia Comes With Music device, there is no per-track cost for these unlimited downloads. There have been some media reports that there is a maximum of 120 tracks but this is not correct.

You'll note the careful wording of there being "no per-track cost", which isn't quite the same thing as "free". Still, there's no limit on downloads, then?

Right?
Your licence to download Comes With Music Content is limited to your personal, non-commercial and reasonable use. If our analysis of your use of the service suggests abusive or excessive downloading, Nokia may contact you and ask you to moderate your usage. If you fail to comply with such a request, Nokia reserves the right to restrict or terminate your use of the service.

So the general guidance we give is that you can download as much music as you want as long as you use the service for your own personal, non-commercial use.

So there is a limit, you just don't know what it is in advance - and it's what Nokia deem to be "reasonable". Perhaps Nokia might like to share what their concept of "reasonable" is with their customers before asking them to buy a service. It would seem to be hard to decide if a deal is a good one if you don't know how many tracks you're being allowed to buy. And it's not entirely straight to suggest a service is unlimited when, erm, there actually is a limit on usage - however generous and understandable that might be.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Am currently being put through Saturday night's 'X Factor'. One of the Carphone Warehouse's sponsorship bumpers has just told me that this phone "Comes with millions of tracks to download and keep". Woohoo! Millions! That's better than 120.

Good god, this programme is horrible. I hate 'Big Band Week'. Some little shit's bound to bugger up 'Mack the Knife'.

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