Nokia's Comes With Music Barely Breaks 100K UsersNokia's Comes With Music Barely Breaks 100K Users

Nokia put a lot of marketing muscle and dollars behind its Comes With Music campaign. Despite the promise of free music for a year, the service only managed to interest 107,000 users it its first 365 days.A lot of people questioned the Comes With Music (CWM) campaign from the start. The service offered those who purchased specific phones from specific operators (mostly in Europe) the ability to download an unlimited amount of music over the course of a year of ownership. Free music, it turns out, wasn't as big a draw as Nokia had hoped.

The service is available in nine countries and here's how the membership breaks down:

-UK - 32,728 (launch date: Oct 08) -Singapore - 19,318 (Feb 09) -Australia - 23,003 (Mar 09) -Brazil - 10,809 (Apr 09) -Sweden - 1,101 (Apr 09) -Italy - 691 (Apr 09) -Mexico - 16,344 (May 09) -Germany - 2,673 (May 09) -Switzerland - 560 (Jun 09)

The total comes to 107,227. Nokia said that it planned to offer the service in the U.S. this year, but that has been pushed back to 2010. Part of the problem with CWM is that it is hobbled by odd DRM strictures and less-than-intuitive syncing with PCs.

At least Nokia admitted, in a blog post, that it hasn't been the most successful launch. "Sure, it didn't start out that rosy, with lots of folk not really certain about what Comes With Music offered ... we never shied away from the important education process that is needed in order to fathom that you can download and forever-keep as many tracks as you like -- but the past 365 days have seen a much greater understanding and appreciation for the service emerge."

In order to spur interest in the service, Nokia is offering its earliest adopters in the U.K. a free 90-day extension of Comes With Music.

There's no question that there's hunger for freee music. Napster proved that 12 years ago. But the limits shackling Comes With Music in its current form need to be unlocked -- or at least loosened. Can and will Nokia find the right mixture of handsets, operator partnerships and DRM agreements to make sure Comes With Music sees its second birthday?

[Via MoCo News]