Really? People have said it's SIGNIFICANTLY improved. I think it's partially dependent on what you consider normal, so it might be that the quality is higher but so different to you that it seems worse because it is atypical of what you are used to.
For me, I think the service is currently a failure. For starters, I liked the addition of lyrics. However, I was HOPING that it would just download tiny text files of lyrics with each playlist. Instead, you HAVE to be connected to the Internet to access lyrics, and it seemed that MORE than half of the music I listened to had no available lyrics, which was disappointing and frustrating. Basically, that selling point was butchered for me upon use of the trial. THEN, I found out that it won't let me keep the unlimited skips while offline. I'm not sure if it was just acting up, but if you HAVE to be connected to the Internet to have the unlimited skips, then it kills off THAT feature for me as well.
Then you get to the playlists themselves. I'm not sure if they really sounded BETTER, but they did sound good. Regardless, the playlists are WAY too redundant. I made 5 playlists, 3 with semi-similar bands, but none of which shared an artist. I was still finding SEVERAL songs repeated between the 3 of them. I then grabbed the "Christian Alt/Metal" playlist they have, thinking I'd get SOME Christian metal. Instead, I'm inundated with slow songs and a bunch of stuff I had no desire to hear. It wasn't even Alt Rock music, it was just soft garbage most of the time. I never actually listened to a song on the playlist because I wouldn't find something worth listening. They need to actually understand that:
1. Alt Rock and Metal are NOT similar, so don't combine them in a playlist.
2. If you ARE going to combine Alt Rock and Metal into a playlist, you might consider putting Alt Rock OR Metal into the playlist at some point, if not both.
Overall, Nokia Music+ was a massive flop for me today, as the things I wanted (unlimited skips and lyrics) appear to need an always-on connection, which ruins the whole point of offline playlists, to an extent. That they can't have some greater variety between playlists either makes me wonder what the point of multiple playlists even is.