I saw this day coming. Being a proud Nokia user since around 5 years, I went ahead to buy a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic last year, despite my knowing the fact that it wasn’t the best touch screen device out there. But there weren’t as good options for its price at that time here in India. Anyway, my phone came with an interesting “Comes With Music” gift coupon that let me download a maximum of 100 songs from the Nokia Ovi Music store, for free. Not expecting much from the store, I logged into it to redeem my coupon. To my surprise, I found the store to be flooded with music from all parts of the world. Name the song, and it was there. Hollywood, Bollywood, English, Hindi, they were all there. I was so excited about it that even with my freaking slow Internet connection, I kept my patience and downloaded many song. I was impressed with the service, and wanted to become a full-time subscriber. But to my awe, I found out that the only way to download music off that site was to redeem gift coupons. “Bad strategy by Nokia!” was the only thought that came to my mind. They were clearly spoiling an excellent music service by not offering paid subscription options. If I wanted to download songs after my 100-limit was over, I would have to purchase another “Comes With Music” phone to get a gift coupon? That just seemed outrageous, and I thought the service would not survive for long that way.And as it turned out, I was right. Nokia has recently announced they would be shutting down their Ovi Music store in various countries, except some. Good thing is that India comes under that exception, among China and Brazil.
