RSSEurope Gets Unlimited Mobile Music Service
By Ed Oswald | Published June 15, 2007, 10:00 AM
European customers can now download an unlimited amount of music to their phones thanks to a new service called MusicStation.
The service debuted in Sweden on Thursday, and will launch in markets across the rest of Europe, Asia, and Africa over the next several months, as the company has agreements with about 30 operators. It aims to serve about 100 million phones within one year.
Plans to offer the service in the United States were not specified as part of the announcement.
Instead of charging per song download, as current music-to-phone services do, a 2.99 euro per week charge (or 1.99 pounds in the UK) would be assessed, which includes data charges. MusicStation users would then be able to download as much music as they want.
The amount of music storable of the phone would depend of the capacities of the device itself. Tracks would initially not be transferable to a user's personal computer, however the service would eventually have a PC component to permit users to listen to downloaded tracks in the near future.
"MusicStation's launch today heralds the beginning of the next generation of mobile music," Rob Lewis said, CEO of the service's parent company Omnifone.
About 1 million tracks would be offered from the four music groups it has content deals with: Universal Music, Sony BMG, Warner Music, and EMI.
Omnifone is only the latest in a string of companies in recent weeks to make mobile music announcements in an attempt to distract consumers from the launch of the iPhone. Apple will release the device on June 29.
I think the only way this will be a success is if people can do what they want with the music (ie. transfer it to computer and not have DRM all over). Especially in Europe, where people are now discovering in mass numbers encrypted p2p file-sharing (such as apps like GigaTribe http://www.gigatribe.com ). Very few phones in circulation here in Europe can support mp3's...this idea may be a bit ahead of it's time, who knows...
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|Woah! I want this.
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|The advanced nature of the mobile generation, outside of the US, is likely to be just one clear reason why MusicStation is being launched to the rest of the world. As Apple is launching iPhone at the end of June to the US market, with no dates specified for the rest of the world as yet, Omnifones announcement is clearly no distraction to the US market or to the millions whose personal & personalised choice of device is important them.
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