Nokia India shuts down digital music store; users can access service on mobile-only platform Music Unlimited

Within a week after the announcement of its acquisition by Microsoft, Nokia is cutting down on its services, it seems. It has begun by shutting Nokia India's Nokia Music Store. Existing users will now have to go to the mobile-only service Music Unlimited to download new music and listen to Mix Radio. The development was first reported by Medianama.

Nokia Music Store was a digital music store that could be accessed via desktop as well as mobile. It was launched in 2009 and offered music in various genres like regional, Bollywood, classical, Sufi, etc. The Music Unlimited service, which was started as Nokia Ovi Music Unlimited, only comes bundled with selected Nokia handsets as of now. It is a subscription-based service. With this movie, Nokia is cutting on the PC-based services and focusing more on mobile strategy.

The Nokia Music store site states that the service is no longer available. "You can still enjoy Nokia Music on most Nokia phones. Listen to mixes, enjoy your own music and connect to local music in the usual way," said the portal. It added that users will no longer be able to download music from Nokia Music through their web browser, the Nokia music player, etc.

A Nokia spokesperson has told BGR India that the company had shut down desktop downloads in December 2011 only. "We were running the website and desktop client in maintenance mode as per global Nokia Care policy. We had shut down desktop downloads in December 2011 and moved to mobile only subscription plans since then. However, users who had subscriptions before that were still being supported. But with those subscriptions coming to an end, we removed the placeholder site yesterday," he said.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)