Sadly, my first attempt was thwarted by the message you see above you. I'm a Mac user at home, and although I knew that songs were DRM'd WMA files, I hoped I'd still be able to browse the store on my Mac. I was wrong. Not to worry - I have a seven year old Dell notebook that I keep for occasions just like this.
Unfortunately, my second attempt was thwarted too. You see, like many tech-savvy peeps, I prefer Firefox as my browser of choice. Nokia, however, seems to have entered into some form of unholy alliance with Microsoft, as you can only access the store using Internet Explorer 6 and above on an XP or Vista machine. Considering the store is still in Beta, I imagine they'll remedy this rather quickly, but it still doesn't help sell their product when they're so restrictive in who can access it.
Once I had located where Internet Explorer was in the depths of my lappy's file system, I was ready to go. The site, music.nokia.com.au, actually looks pretty good - it's easy to navigate, there's plenty of music to choose from (1.5 million tracks, although nothing from Warner at the moment), and it has a fair amount of local music as well.
To download music, you need to download a plugin for IE. The process took about 10 minutes, and was a bit frustrating, but it's a one-off event, so even the most impatient of us can handle it. The Plugin loads a side panel which offers the music player for trialling 30-second bits, offers your current playlist and shows what songs you've downloaded.
When I was downloading the JBT album, my anti-virus software was freaking out about low-risk changes, even though I had approved the action. After restarting the computer the problem disappeared, leading me to believe it was the anti-virus software, but when you get a popup after every song in an 11-track download, tensions begin to run a little hot.
The songs themselves are 192Kbps (although there are some legacy 128Kbps tracks in there, which aren't clearly marked), which is good enough to burn, then rip gain so you can listen to the music on your iPod. This is far from ideal, but unless you listen to your music through audiophile speakers, you'll survive.
So, will it take out iTunes? No way. There are too many hurdles. Of course, I haven't tested out the unlimited streaming service or the purchase from a mobile phone options yet - you need to sign up your credit card for the streaming service (which only works with PCs, so no good for me), and I don't own a Nokia phone, so no dice there. Has anybody else out in Giz-land had a go? What did you think? Let us know in comments.
Form : http://www.gizmodo.com.au/
Technorati Tags: Nokia, Music, Music Online, iTune
Unfortunately, my second attempt was thwarted too. You see, like many tech-savvy peeps, I prefer Firefox as my browser of choice. Nokia, however, seems to have entered into some form of unholy alliance with Microsoft, as you can only access the store using Internet Explorer 6 and above on an XP or Vista machine. Considering the store is still in Beta, I imagine they'll remedy this rather quickly, but it still doesn't help sell their product when they're so restrictive in who can access it.
Once I had located where Internet Explorer was in the depths of my lappy's file system, I was ready to go. The site, music.nokia.com.au, actually looks pretty good - it's easy to navigate, there's plenty of music to choose from (1.5 million tracks, although nothing from Warner at the moment), and it has a fair amount of local music as well.
To download music, you need to download a plugin for IE. The process took about 10 minutes, and was a bit frustrating, but it's a one-off event, so even the most impatient of us can handle it. The Plugin loads a side panel which offers the music player for trialling 30-second bits, offers your current playlist and shows what songs you've downloaded.
When I was downloading the JBT album, my anti-virus software was freaking out about low-risk changes, even though I had approved the action. After restarting the computer the problem disappeared, leading me to believe it was the anti-virus software, but when you get a popup after every song in an 11-track download, tensions begin to run a little hot.
The songs themselves are 192Kbps (although there are some legacy 128Kbps tracks in there, which aren't clearly marked), which is good enough to burn, then rip gain so you can listen to the music on your iPod. This is far from ideal, but unless you listen to your music through audiophile speakers, you'll survive.
So, will it take out iTunes? No way. There are too many hurdles. Of course, I haven't tested out the unlimited streaming service or the purchase from a mobile phone options yet - you need to sign up your credit card for the streaming service (which only works with PCs, so no good for me), and I don't own a Nokia phone, so no dice there. Has anybody else out in Giz-land had a go? What did you think? Let us know in comments.
Form : http://www.gizmodo.com.au/
Technorati Tags: Nokia, Music, Music Online, iTune
