Nokia appear to be taking a big bash at the dominance of iTunes in the local market. With high hopes I tested it out by attempting to download the free single of the week. Unfortunately It didn’t go quite to plan. I’m quite a Nokia fan (since getting an N95) as most people in here know so this held some promise, I’ve also been waiting for a challenger to iTunes (even though I do mostly like iTunes) but I’m afraid it’s not good news…
First you have to register then install the ‘Nokia Media Bar’ – which is not the best experience. I did not really like the intimidating message below “To Play or Buy music you need to install the Nokia Media Bar”
Here’s the deal. I don’t want any more plugins. I don’t want proprietary players and I don’t need any more music player software… I just want to download my tracks and use them how I want with the software I want! Especially when what I’m installing does not work…
It took ages to download the track and when I finally got it – this is what I saw…
Then this…
Sorry Nokia – although it looked promising …20 minutes later and I still haven’t been able to listen to anything…you just lost me.
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I was also interested to see how this would turn out, but didn’t get anywhere near as far as Iain. With no support for Firefox (actually anything besides IE6+), and an apparent dependance on Windows Media Player (possibly the worst media player in existence), I have already given up.
Aside from the limited browser and system support, I think with a mere two-fifths of the number of songs on the iTunes music store, it looks like they have a long way to go before they can really establish themselves as a serious contender.