Nokia has announced it is to acquire Loudeye in a deal worth about $60 million.

Loudeye is a business-to-business digital media solutions company that provides digital music platforms and digital media distribution services.

The deal means that Nokia can offer consumers a better mobile music experience, improving the music applications on its devices and offering consumers a wide range of digital music for purchase.

The Finnish company is investing heavily in multi-function mobile devices like its N-series mobiles as it believes the trend is toward consumers buying a multi-function device rather than standalone digital audio players.

“Music is a key experience for Nokia and Nokia Nseries multimedia computers and we want to be able to offer the best fully integrated mobile music experience to our customers”, said Anssi Vanjokia, executive vice president and general manager, Multimedia, Nokia.

“Loudeye brings a number of key assets to Nokia, including a great team of people, a substantial content catalogue, and a robust service platform that will help us to achieve this objective.”

Loudeye makes it easier for Nokia to provide music content, as it has aggregated rights and content from major record labels to offer a catalogue of over 1.6 million tracks.

Nokia has been working with the company since 2004, when it was announced that Loudeye was developing a wireless music platform for mobile service providers.

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