Nokia Music Store and Ovi Music On 29 August 2007 Nokia launched the Nokia Music Store as part of the
Ovi services portal from Nokia. It was based on the LoudEye/
OD2 platform. The original idea behind the store was to provide to all Nokia
MP3 capable mobile users a music store on the phone as on the PC. The Nokia Music Store officially opened first in the UK on 1 October 2007 with offering of music from
Sony BMG,
Universal Music,
EMI and
Warner Music Group, as well as others. The introduction of the Nokia Music Store was not met enthusiastically with some
mobile network operators who were already operating their own music download stores. Nokia managed to struck a deal to sell
Kylie Minogue's
X on the store in the UK from 21 November 2007, five days before its slated international release. The launch of the store in other European countries was delayed to 2008. The roll-out of the Nokia Music Store service differed by country and region. It went live in Australia on 22 April 2008, in France on 23 April 2008, Spain on 28 September 2008, United Arab Emirates in November 2008, South Africa on 24 April 2009 (with Comes With Music following on 27 August 2009), India in 2009, and on February 11, 2010 (Comes With Music service) in 11 countries and territories in the Middle East: Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, the Palestinian Territories, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman. This service had its own PC software to serve as front gate of the store on the PC and on the phones. It was called Nokia Music initially, then renamed to Nokia Ovi Player in late 2009, and later Nokia Music Player in late 2011. Until 2010 the service had
DRM files that prevented files from being burn onto CDs, allowing playback from mobile devices and the PC software only. Market conditions encouraged a move to DRM free, as evidenced in the
Brainstorm Magazine article "Music wants to be mobile...and DRM free". In case the user wanted to burn the song, they had to buy it from the store. Along with going DRM-free by the third quarter of 2010, the Nokia Music Store was also rebranded to
Ovi Music to align with Nokia's
Ovi branding. During the latter part of 2010 and into 2011, Nokia Music continued developing its app client for the
MeeGo platform along with its existing
Symbian platform.
Comes With Music In October 2008, Nokia announced the
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, a direct touchscreen competitor to the
iPhone and with it came the service
Comes With Music, which consists of a year of free music downloads from the Nokia Music Store included in the price of the phone. This service was optional to the carriers. Within the box of the phone there was a card with an ID that will be linked to the PC (
MAC address) and mobile phone (
IMEI), so that PC and mobile phone have unlimited music downloads for over a year. The Comes With Music was initially announced in December 2007 to allow 12, 18, or 24 months of unlimited free-of-charge music downloads with the purchase of a Nokia Comes With Music edition phone. Files could be downloaded on mobile devices or personal computers, and kept permanently. Comes With Music was rebranded to
Ovi Music Unlimited in all territories by late 2010. In January 2011 Nokia withdrew the Ovi Music Unlimited programme in 27 countries, due to its failure to gain traction; existing subscribers could continue to download until their contracts ended. It notably failed to catch on in markets like Europe, partly due to lack of support from the mobile operators.
Nokia Music and MixRadio The Nokia Music
app was announced for the first time on the
Windows Phone platform with the
Lumia 710 and
Lumia 800 on 26 October 2011 in London. With the launch of
Windows Phone 8 in late 2012, Nokia Music came to the platform with an app optimised for the new operating system from Microsoft. In the following months, Nokia Music was released to the
Windows Store on
Windows 8 and
Windows RT. Nokia Music launched in the U.S. market on 15 September 2012 with a performance at
Irving Plaza by
Green Day. Fans were treated to a special performance from the band, along with heavy social media involvement by
AT&T, Nokia, the band themselves and
Warner Bros. A premium subscription service called Nokia Music+ was later also released in some territories. On 20 November 2013 Nokia renamed the entire app and service to "Nokia MixRadio". This change also made its way to the Windows 8 and Windows RT app stores The following day, Nokia MixRadio made its official global launch with a special event in New York City where
Nile Rodgers played. Nokia MixRadio began the year with the launch of the MixRadio app for the
Nokia Asha and
Nokia X platforms at
GSMA Mobile World Congress in February 2014. The service was again renamed to only "MixRadio" on 1 July 2014, to reflect the change of ownership from Nokia to
Microsoft. On 11 September 2014, the MixRadio application was announced for the
Sonos range of wireless speakers with a companion app. MixRadio further extended their reach on 27 November 2014, with the application being added to the adidas miCoach Smart Run touchscreen watch.
Sale of MixRadio to Line Corporation On 18 December 2014, after mulling a spin-off of the service, Microsoft announced that it would sell MixRadio to
Line Corporation, a subsidiary of
Naver Corporation, for an undisclosed amount. On 17 March 2015, the transaction was completed. At this time, beta versions of the app were released for Android and iOS. On 19 May 2015 MixRadio announced the launch of the commercial
iOS and
Android apps with simultaneous launch events in
New York City and
Singapore. MixRadio also announced their partnership with
HTC at this event to integrate MixRadio into the
BlinkFeed software of HTC smartphones. The
HTC BlinkFeed integration with MixRadio went live on 9 June 2015. During the third quarter of 2015, MixRadio further expanded its reach to other platforms, namely
Apple Watch,
Amazon Appstore and
Tizen. In the first week of November 2015, MixRadio launched as a fully featured web browser client for the
Windows and
OS X operating systems, mirroring the look and functionality of its smartphone apps. Starting in late September 2015, MixRadio was made available to download through the
Amazon Appstore (and consequently
BlackBerry devices). The app was also preinstalled on the Samsung Z3, a smartphone running the
Tizen operating system. In late August 2015, MixRadio beta was opened to the general public to help test and contribute feedback regarding the app itself. The public betas were later expanded to the MixRadio client on iOS in early October 2015.
Discontinuation On 16 February 2016, Line announced that MixRadio would be discontinued, citing "a careful assessment of the subsidiary's overall performance" and "the financial challenges posed by the music streaming market". MixRadio was officially closed on 21 March 2016. ==Features==