In what should come as great news for music and Nokia enthusiasts, the Nokia Music Store has gone live in India. To my pleasant surprise the store seemed to carry a large selection of Indian music across different genres, which included music in regional Indian languages as well. The reason I was surprised was because India not only has major labels like Universal or Sony, but also a large group of local ones, which I’m glad to say Nokia has been able to get onboard, as promised. You can also find international music as well.

This however, seems to me to be a soft launch as I could not purchase music using my credit card, for now the only way to get music from the store is to have  a ‘promotional pin’.

Here are a few screenshots from my laptop as well as the N97 so you can get an idea of how it works on a computer and a ‘mobile computer’, something Nokia likes to call the N97.

(Click to enlarge)

(From the N97’s Music Application)

(This was the first time it look me to the ‘India’ store)

(The first page that loads)

(The music is grouped under different categories)

(The latest Hindi film music collection seemed a little low)

(I can’t imagine how any of these would be a ‘Top Album’, anyway)

(The playlist features a nice selection of old and new tracks)

(If you like a track and click on it, you get three options as symbolised above. The first is the option to listen to a 30 second clip of the track, the next is to add it to your ‘Wishlist’ and the last is ‘Download/Buy’)

(Clicking on the three lined button (under back) brings up this menu)

(The button under the above (the key) brings you to this screen if you have not signed in or registered. Else it takes you to your account where you have options such as ‘Wishlist’ and ‘Payment Details’)

Sadly since you cannot purchase music as yet (at least I couldn’t) I could not ascertain the prices at which songs and albums would be offered. My experience on the N97 was pretty good, however when I fired up my Mac to check it out in detail, I was greeted by the following.

I tried Safari and Opera as well with no luck. I fired my Windows laptop only to be greeted by the same screen again. The problem was that I was using Firefox, I needed to use IE. Nokia please support a larger number of browsers and OS’s, I am sure the support will come at some point but we need it now other wise a lot of people will miss out on the ‘integrated experience’. To a large extent, the ‘first impression is the last impression’.

On a positive note, we should see ‘Comes With Music’ devices hit India soon!