Perhaps to the disdain of mobile carriers, Nokia continues to ramp up its own music offering. Three new music-focused handsets were announced today, along with expansion of the company’s own music download store and all-you-can-eat ‘Comes With Music’ subscription-based offering.
Of the three new handsets, the most interesting is the higher end XpressMusic 5730 (available Q3, €280), which is Nokia’s first music phone to feature a full (slide out) QWERTY keyboard, and just like the 5800, runs the company’s Symbian S60 smartphone OS. The 5730 is being pitched as both a music-centric and messaging – think email, IM and social networking – device, featuring a redesigned home screen that gives shortcut access to the phone’s music library, and the socially-aware ‘contacts’ bar, which is able to pull in the latest communication and RSS feeds from up to 20 of a user’s most important contacts.
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I recently hailed Spotify as my streaming music service of choice but bemoaned the lack of a mobile version. That’s set to change, reports my friend Mike Butcher 
My music streaming weapon of choice used to be Pandora, the Music Genome Project-based service in which a group of experts have analyzed the component parts or ‘genes’ of thousands of tracks in order to recommend like-minded music. I not only found its recommendations (play tracks similar to artist or genre x) to be more accurate than rival Last.fm, but also loved its simple User Interface, designed perfectly for when I’m in a lazy listening mood. The problem is that Pandora stopped being accessible from the UK a while back. Enter 
It won’t be popular, yet Pandora’s decision to introduce audio ads is almost certainly necessary to keep the service running and, therefore, something I welcome. Especially if it helps bring the service back to the UK.
Major record labels to Apple: You can ditch DRM completely in return for higher prices.
There was lots of activity in the Digital Lifestyle space in 08 with new devices, services and platforms being launched, and some of our favorites from last year receiving significant updates. One notable trend throughout is the way in which these products and services began to converge. Not in the sense of all-in-one devices, although these do exist, but through hardware, services and content playing nicely, often through open standards, platforms or partnerships, with the Internet acting as a conduit. On that note, here’s my pick of the best ten Digital Lifestyle products of 08. 
With little or no fanfare, 
The