Nokia announced its music subscription service, Nokia Music+, at the beginning of the year but it was only available to Windows Phone 8 users. Today, the company released its Nokia Music app for Windows 8 and Windows RT. There have been some improvements made to the service, most notably the improved Mixes feature, which lets you listen to playlists that are “hand-crafted” by Nokia employees. This is similar to what Songza has with their human-created playlists. Nokia Music will also include the ability to make radio stations from multiple artists. Mixes can be downloaded for offline listening as well.
While Nokia Music for Windows 8/RT is free, only Nokia Music+ subscribers will get all that the app has to offer. Subscribers will be able to listen to music at a higher bitrate, have unlimited skips for radio stations and mixes, and lyrics that are synced with each track. Free users are given a free 7 day trial and the subscription service will only cost $4 per month but it’s much more limited than services like Spotify. It’s more similar to Pandora’s premium service since you can’t listen to and download full albums like you can with Spotify Premium.
The app itself looks really great with huge pictures of the artists in the background of the now play screen. There are also artist bios, recommendations, and information on where the artist is performing if he or she is on tour. The app can be snapped left or right so you have a persistent media player while you multitask in another app.
Nokia Music is up against some stiff competition as Microsoft has its own music subscription service in the form of Xbox Music, which offers similar functionality. Still, users may find Nokia’s Mixes and multiple artist radio stations compelling features.
Be sure to check out our full review for Nokia Music here.
Source: Nokia
