Nokia has led the way when it comes to distributing music with mobile phone handsets, with Comes With Music proving particularly popular. It’s looking to innovate further, however, by offering a global, DRM-free catalogue. Although Comes With Music isn’t likely to offer the same DRM-free service, it’s a good start. To find out more, read on after the jump…

Nokia is rolling out DRM-free music across international markets, courtesy of its a la carte music download service. The first Ovi Store to offer DRM-free music was in Russia, back in November. Since then, India has followed suit, with Nokia focussing on growth markets before it gets to the western world.

This helps to bring Nokia’s music service in line with Ovi Maps – where you pay for the handset and the service is included within that charge. Unfortunately, Comes With Music isn’t currently on course to offer DRM-free music.

Instead, although you can download as much music as you want in the first year of having your Comes With Music Nokia handset – such as the Nokia 5800 Comes With Music – you’ll be restricted to listening to it on that device alone, with no way of transferring the music to another Nokia handset.

That’s not to say that Nokia isn’t thinking about offering Comes With Music without DRM. In an interview with Niklas Savander – the Executive Vice President of Services for Nokia – pointed out that indeed, Nokia is indeed “having dialogues on this one with the music industry”.

It seems like there’s a long way to go, however, and you may well have to be happy with DRM-free a la carte services, as Savander also pointed out that it’s simply “a little bit early to predict the outcome”.

Via Engadget