Nokia have signed Loudeye to develop and advanced wireless digital music platform for their range of mobile handsets. The announcement comes days after Motorola and Apple got together to bring iTunes to mobile phones.
No details on the platform have yet been released, but the deal is for several years.
“This agreement with Nokia represents a significant strategic opportunity for Loudeye to work with the leading mobile communications company in the world to develop an advanced wireless music platform,” said Jeff Cavins, Loudeye’s president and chief executive officer. “We are very excited about our relationship with Nokia and look forward to sharing more details in the future.”
This is another early step showing that online music services and handset manufacturers believe that mobile phones have tremendous potential as tools for listening to, and buying, digital music.
Loudeye recently acquired OD2, Europe’s leading white label music download service and claims to have the world’s largest music archive. We’ll be interested to see how the service ties in with Visual Radio, if at all. If Visual Radio gets a proper European or worldwide launch, then it may form the basis of a service for radio listeners to buy and download music heard during broadcasts.