Nokia to buy Loudeye for $60 million

Cory Bergman August 8th, 2006

In effort to boost its capabilities in delivering mobile music, Nokia says it’s buying Seattle-based Loudeye, a digital music distributor. “Music is now the number one service for selling advanced mobile phones — it has been cameras, and in the future it might be television — but in 2006 music has become the service phone makers have been concentrating on,” said FIM Securities analyst Erik Sucksdorff. Interesting factoid: Nokia said it sold more than 15 million music-enabled phones in April to June, roughly double the amount Apple’s iPod’s and making it the world’s largest manufacturer of digital music players.