Sprint Launchings Music to Mobile Downloads

* * Beatles-Beatles writes to tell us that Sprint Nextel is looking to take a bite out of Apple's iTunes pie with the upcoming release of the first music download service direct to mobile phones. The service offers the ability to get the song directly to your phone in addition to a high quality version that you can download to your PC. From the article: "The Sprint Music Store will enable subscribers of the third-largest mobile carrier to choose from 250,000 songs from all four major music labels and download them for $2.50 each using phones from either Samsung Electronics or Sanyo Electric."

Comments

That's goods news

[Anonymous Coward]

Is loves tos hears stuffs likes thats.

selection down, price up

[yagu]

I heard this same announcement on the radio this morning. My initial reaction was $2.50 a pop?, what the? My next reaction is, I'll never buy music at $2.50 a song, never! (Okay, unless you count Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, or Violin Concerto in D as a song.)

I'm getting the sense that these providers may actually really not care about the phone part of your cell "phone" service. Heck, if the buying public really will pay that kind of money for a song, why bother trying to make money on cell phone technology?

Are any slashdotters willing to pay this price per song? (Not to mention the selection is less than half the other major players.)

Where did I put my Dual 1226? (Not to worry, I know exactly where it is.)

Re:selection down, price up

[neillewis]

If they can get away with it for ringtones, of course they'll try and gouge you for songs too.

Just say no.

Re:selection down, price up

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Sadly, a lot of people will pay that for a freaking ringtone, and that is a huge market. The same can be said of the games and backgrounds that can be bought for a phone, and I've seen many that expire in 90 or 120 days. That isn't good enough for me.

I don't think slashdotters are the target market. If they are, then I think Sprint has miscalculated.

Re:selection down, price up

[ksheff]

Are any slashdotters willing to pay this price per song?

I wouldn't. But then again, I use a cell phone to just make and receive calls. Not to take pictures, or function as a PDA, or annoy people with custom ring tones.

Re:selection down, price up

[kubevubin]

The problem here is that there are plenty of people who would pay $2.50 per song simply because they're too retarded to transfer music to their phone manually.

Re:selection down, price up

[vought]

Yeah! It's a bargain at half the price!

Oh, wait a minute.

It's the usual cell carrier strategy of "introduce high, then chase the market until you've settled on a price point".

Unfortunately, there are other companies that sell music for less already - Apple is in the sweet spot, with Napster below, but with more restrictive licensing, SprintTel above with onerous prices.

As an Apple shareholder, my reaction is easily summed up: Keep making stupid mistakes, cell carriers!

Re:selection down, price up

[ickleberry]

Are any slashdotters willing to pay this price per song? (Not to mention the selection is less than half the other major players.) No. Especially not while it has DRM. Of course if it was lossless or 256k stereo mp3 i would, but not very often.

Re:selection down, price up

[ickleberry]

That is really quite sad, a few seconds with a midi editor & musicrobot i can get a superior ringtone for free, mobile content providers probably have a bunch of people doing exactly that. Backgrounds are even worse, google or even the shittyest digicam will get you one in a few seconds. Its sad that teenyboppers are willing to pay as much as 4 euros over here for a 128x128 Jape Egg.

Re:selection down, price up

[ickleberry]

I wouldn't. But then again, I use a cell phone to just make and receive calls. Not to take pictures, or function as a PDA, or annoy people with custom ring tones.
You're boring. I use mine to ssh into my machines & send emails. custom ringtones arent annoying, that way you always know its your phone and other people dont think its theirs. but the stuff that is sold through operators is hardly "custom" is it? its just a generic extention of what you had when you bought the phone

Re:selection down, price up

[vought]

The problem here is that there are plenty of people who would pay $2.50 per song simply because they're too retarded to transfer music to their phone manually.

Which is precisely why iTunes is such a comparatively elegant solution. Who needs yet another music management program? iTunes will sync your music to your phone (provided it is a ROKR...they need an iTunes RAZR immediately).

No one needs to sync music manually. Why SprinTel expects you to do so is beyond me.

Re:selection down, price up

[javamann]

I'm sorry but I don't want to hear your phone, or anyone elses phone. Put the damn thing on vibrate mode and quit bugging me. There are few things worse than hearing someones idea of a cute ringtone twenty times a day just because THEY think it's cute.

Re:selection down, price up

[drinkypoo]

Some people aren't allowed to transfer content to their phone manually without going through a lot of rigamarole. If you've got a common motorola phone that you got from verizon it will almost certainly be locked down so that you can only do that stuff via their web service, at a premium. Verizon V220 phones [for example] require seem hacking to unlock that functionality. Yes, for most people it's a case of stupidity, but not all.

Re:selection down, price up

[ickleberry]

Heh... the Nokia 9500 doesnt have vibrate. but ssh with 600x200 screen & a full qwerty keyboard is a lot better than 128x128 :P

Re:selection down, price up

[Lord_Dweomer]

"My initial reaction was $2.50 a pop?, what the? My next reaction is, I'll never buy music at $2.50 a song, never! "

I had the same initial reaction, but you need to take a step back and think about what you're getting...You're getting a high quality download for your computer, and a ringtone for your phone.

You DO realize that most people pay $2.50 for JUST a simple lo-fi ringtone, right? And that may even be a weekly fee depending on who they buy it from.

So what it really comes down to is this:
Download for computer - $1.00
Download for phone - $1.50

Or however you wanna break it down. Either way, i'd say you're getting a pretty fair deal here depending of course on what sorts of DRM and restrictions they put on it.

Re:selection down, price up

[ksheff]

I'm from the era where geeks were just boring, not wierd, so that's a compliment. And yes, custom/downloadable/whatever ringtones are annoying as hell. If you can't tell if the phone that's in your own damn pocket or clipped to your belt is the one that's ringing, you have problems. Having everyone in a 3-4 cubicle radius know which phone is ringing because of some dorky pop tune is annoying.

Re:selection down, price up

[utnow]

I know... i flipped at the price. Does it make ANY sense to try to defeat iTunes by charging 2.5 times as much?

Re:selection down, price up

[bhtooefr]

Hell, on my Sprint (not SprinTel - mine predates the merger) Nokia 6225, I can use said shitty digicam to make the background.

Oh, and did I mention that said shitty digicam is built into the phone, and that it's a fully documented feature?

Re:selection down, price up

[GlassHeart]

Others are willing to pay hundreds of dollars per hour because they are too retarded to unclog their own plumbing. Still others pay $50 several times a year because they are too retarded to change the oil in their own engine. I hear some are so retarded they even pay other people to cook their food for them!

We're all retards at one thing or another, friend. Please be kind.

Re:selection down, price up

[kubevubin]

Others are willing to pay hundreds of dollars per hour because they are too retarded to unclog their own plumbing.
I'll give you this one.
Still others pay $50 several times a year because they are too retarded to change the oil in their own engine.
That's either called 'being lazy' or 'being unwilling to learn'. I know virtually nothing about cars, and even I can change my oil.
I hear some are so retarded they even pay other people to cook their food for them!
If you're talking about fast food, that's perfectly acceptable. If you're talking about in-home cooking, that's laziness.
Nonetheless, I admit that my 'retard' statement was a bit harsh, and I apologize to anyone who was in any way offended.

Re:selection down, price up

[computerjunkie]

Perhaps you think it's a fair deal but I don't. The whole notion of paying for a ringtone seems pretty foolish to me.

Re:selection down, price up

[Chmarr]

I hear some are so retarded they even pay other people to cook their food for them!

If you're talking about fast food, that's perfectly acceptable. If you're talking about in-home cooking, that's laziness.

Depends on how much your time is worth. Someone earning millions a year can afford to have an in-house cook. When he goes home, he wants to RELAX, and that relaxation time is well worth the price of an in-house cook.

And, no, I'm not one of those people, but I wish I was :)

Re:selection down, price up

[Lord_Dweomer]

There's a difference between it being a fair deal and it being foolish. I too agree it is very foolish, hence the data cord I have that lets me upload my own ringtones for free.

However, the market has shown that it is willing to bear the cost of $2.50 for a ringtone, and in comparison to that price, this is an exceptionally fair deal.

Re:selection down, price up

[Fyre2012]

There are few things worse than hearing someones idea of a cute ringtone twenty times a day just because THEY think it's cute.

how about commercials? I find them to be much worse...
I don't want to see advertizing at every single glance, but i'm forced to have my emotions and thoughts fucked with every time i see a bilboard, read the newspaper/magazine, hear a radio ad, visit /., turn on the TV or go see a movie.
I'd rather here a shitty cell phone rendition of some crappy rap song than watch, say, another fabric softner commercial.

welcome to the new world, gramps... now go kick those damn kids off your lawn.

Re:selection down, price up

[zarthrag]

I work for one of sprint's tech support vendors - and I must say this is a typical move. The purpose isn't to compete with iTunes directly, it's to generate cash. Sprint's "clientele" would have no qualms with spending for the phones and the music. (Remember, this is the only major network where you can get in with a $150 deposit if you have bad credit - think about that one.)

What's sad, if you find problems with the service, tech support will likely not be able to help you. (They haven't told us about it YET. I found out more from slashdot than my own managers.)

Re:selection down, price up

[tomstdenis]

Those are a bit different.

In the plumbing case, do you know how much a snake costs? I do, about 100$. And they rust. What does a plumber cost for an hour? Don't know? About 65-85$. You do the math.

As for the car case. In the "ideal" world your car mechanic is supposed to be a professional [and in many cases I suspect they are]. So the idea is when you go in for your "once every few months or whatever" oil change you get the car looked at.

You can't be an expert plumber, car mechanic, pilot, doctor, etc... We need experts.

As for this service... nobodies head will explode if you hook a USB cable to your phone. The fact that people don't is two sided

1. Telcos often lock phones to prevent things [e.g. bluetooth? what bluetooth?]

2. People think "fewer dials and more shiny" is progress. They don't like being given control of what they are doing because clearly if you're capable of controlling your PC it's not advanced enough.

Tom

Re:selection down, price up

[pete6677]

Some people just don't like to deal with pulling shit out of pipes or crawling around on the garage floor. Just like most people eat in restaurants at least sometimes even though hardly anyone is incapable of preparing some sort of food on their own. It's largely about convenience. I could easily change my own oil but have better things to do with my time, like trolling Slashdot.

Re:selection down, price up

[fz00]

You DO realize that most people pay $2.50 for JUST a simple lo-fi ringtone, right? And that may even be a weekly fee depending on who they buy it from.

Buying a ringtone is much different than building a music library. Sprint and the record companies may be using this rationale to justify their price but the reality is that at $2.50 people will not be building libraries of songs. Therefore, they will be unable to catch up to iTunes.

Re:selection down, price up

[ClamIAm]

Some people just don't like to deal with pulling shit out of pipes or crawling around on the garage floor.

Speak for yourself.

Re:selection down, price up

[w3weasel]

1/6 The selection, 2.5 time the price, and 10 time the complication (think *average* user).

the iTunes killer cometh!

Re:selection down, price up

[GlassHeart]

Those are a bit different.

All analogies are.

In the plumbing case, do you know how much a snake costs? I do, about 100$. And they rust. What does a plumber cost for an hour? Don't know? About 65-85$. You do the math.

In the music downloading case, do you know how much a USB cable costs? I do, about 30$. And they break. What does a download cost for a song? Don't know? About 3$. You do the math.

As for the car case. In the "ideal" world your car mechanic is supposed to be a professional [and in many cases I suspect they are]. So the idea is when you go in for your "once every few months or whatever" oil change you get the car looked at.

Right, so if something weird happens to the downloaded song, you go to the Sprint Store and ask the experts.

Don't get me wrong. I think it's absolutely awful that these things are locked away by the carriers even from those who can easily do it themselves. I'm just pointing out that the majority of their customers don't care that they can't do it themselves, just like people would pay for plumbing, oil changing, cooking, and other services, and it's not fair to call them names for this choice.

Re:selection down, price up

[tomstdenis]

In the music downloading case, do you know how much a USB cable costs? I do, about 30$. And they break. What does a download cost for a song? Don't know? About 3$. You do the math.

You're kidding right? I have DB9 serial cables from when I was 12 still in my "box of wires".

As for the cost it's largely immaterial as a lot of things use AB or A-mini plugs. My cables for my mp3 player also work for my phone, etc... Though I'm not discounting the ripoff that 28AWG wire is when bundled in USB packaging.

HOWERVER, you do realize that

1. You need a snake maybe once a year. That's why it rusts between uses

2. You don't plan on buying er... renting ... er licensing more than 10 tracks per decade?

If you buy fewer than one song per year than YES, I can see the $3 charge being ok... but if you're like the typical user you'll probably buy a half dozen songs to start then one every so often. Probably more than 5 a year. In the 10 year lifespan of that cable you can buy 5*10*3= 150$ worth of songs off the telco or 5*10*0.99 + $30 ~ 80$ worth of songs off itunes.

In fact since the songs only cost 99 cents on itunes you're probably going to get more songs than you would at the $3/song rate and in the end get more use out of your headset.

Tom

Re:selection down, price up

[cloudmaster]

If you're paying $50 for a $12 oil change, you, my friend, *are* a retard. And welcome at my garage anytime you need your oil changed, BTW. :)

BTW, your local hardware store sells chemicals which will remove typical drain clogs for $5 to $10. Anything bigger is the result of a retard putting something in a drain that shouldn't have been - and a snake to drag it out can be purchased at your local hardware store for under $25.

I eat fast food, though, so I'll grant you that last one.

Re:selection down, price up

[cloudmaster]

You should really shop around a little more. $10-$20 is not expensive, and you can get them up to the 25 foot range (which will take care of most anything a typical homeowner will *ever* encounter) for well under $50. It doesn't take much skill top operate one, either. I can see hiring a plumber to replace a pipe (well, for others - I'd do it myself because I have this strange compulsion to learn useful skills and I learned about plumbing a long time ago), but you can go out, buy a snake, and return before most plumbers will even get to your house. Heck, you can evev buy some Liquid Plumber for $5 and try that first, so you can return the snake.

A hint - if you oil the tool up before you put it away, it likely won't rust.

Re:selection down, price up

[cloudmaster]

You should also angrily mention that the shitty digicam can't transfer photos off of the phone[1] or do anything else useful via the IR port. Make sure to be very angry when mentioning this, because you bought the stupid thing explicitly for the IR support.

[1] you can assign a photo to a contact, then transfer the contact to a machine, then get the photo out of the contact info. And repeat that for each photo you want to ransfer. Which is a pain in the butt. Or you can send each photo individually via email to your WordPress install which has one of the commonly available picture mail hacks set up.

Re:selection down, price up

[GlassHeart]

You're kidding right? I have DB9 serial cables from when I was 12 still in my "box of wires".

I'm not kidding at all. Every phone I've ever owned has used a different connector.

You don't plan on buying er... renting ... er licensing more than 10 tracks per decade?

I see from the rest of your post that you think the cable will last a decade. My experiences indicate that the cable (just like the chargers) will not last longer than the phone does, which is probably more like two years. In fact, my current phone (which I hate) doesn't even support the standard handsfree minijack.

Re:selection down, price up

[tomstdenis]

I dunno about you but all of my GSM motorola phones have been USB connected...

Maybe you just don't show around enough?

Tom

Re:selection down, price up

[GlassHeart]

I dunno about you but all of my GSM motorola phones have been USB connected...

They are USB capable, yes, but the phone-side connector for the cables tend to be proprietary. Note also that you write "all of my GSM Motorola phones". I've been with AT&T, Sprint, and now T-Mobile, having used an Audiovox, a Nokia, a Toshiba, and now a Siemens.

Maybe you just don't show around enough?

I take the "free" phone they offer, which I suspect is a rather common thing.

Goodie

[tivoKlr]

Boy, I'm lining up right now to buy tracks for 2.50 a piece...

I can see this taking off like a lead balloon.

Re:Goodie

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, like a Led Zepplin.

Re:Goodie

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, if it's a Sprint offering, the price is the least of their problems. Even if they were going to PAY YOU 2.50 per song, they'd find a way to fuck it up.

Re:Goodie

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see this taking off like a lead balloon.

This might work, if, and only if, they have Led Zeppelin songs...

How's the quality?

[ankarbass]

Is it at least 2.5 times as good as iTunes? Since when did music become like crack that we have to have it so bad that we'll pay $2.50 to hear it on a crappy sprint speaker? When I was a kid the best you could hope for was that there were some stickers in the album (dark side of the moon) that you could stare at until you got home to play your new record.

Re:How's the quality?

[Stevyn]

I wouldn't buy it for 100 times the quality. However, teens and freshman college students will buy this crap because their parents pay the cell phone bills. $2.50 is a complete ripoff for anyone with any sense, but the people they're targeting to don't.

Re:How's the quality?

[TyrelHaveman]

I recently bought 3 phones from the Sprint half of Sprint Nextel, having previously been with the Nextel half of Sprint Nextel. Two of the phones (the cheaper ones, for my dad and sister) sound TERRIBLE when playing songs. But the third phone (mine), sounds extremely good. I was quite impressed. My phone is a Sanyo MM-8300 ($280).

As for paying $2.50 per song... yeah... it sucks... specially when they only let you keep them for 60 days, and these were just "ring tones" so they are only 30 seconds long or so! It was worth trying out one song though, just to see/hear what it was like :-)

Re:How's the quality?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yesterday, at least, they were selling on Sprint's website for $59.99 with activation. Just to let'cha know.

Music on My Cell Phone

[queenb**ch]

Ok,

I have napster, sattelite radio, an iPod, a laptop, and a Treo650 which are all perfectly capable of playing MP3's. Now they're going to make you buy a special phone in order to get their songs. I guess if people are stupid enough to pay $2.50 for a ring tone that evaporates in 90 days, it will be a resounding success. Napster is still $9.99 a month for all you can download. I can have 4 songs on my cell phone or 400 on laptop which synchs with my cell phone....Hmmmm....golly, I can't decide....

2 cents,

Queen B

Re:Music on My Cell Phone

[Anonymous Coward]

don't worry. they'll make sure you can't synch music on to your next cell phone

Re:Music on My Cell Phone

[JanneM]

This may come as a shock to people here, but the vast majority of people do not use their computer to manage large music collections. Most people do not in fact use their computer for music at all. A substantial fraction of any industrialized country's population do not in fact even own a computer.

And getting a special phone? Rather you get that nice phone with the neat design and cool themes that's on offer from your carrier and you will find the music player tucked right in there. And it will be right there, in the main screen menu, ready to use whenever you fancy a new song - including on the way home from the club/pub/bar/concert where you heard that amazing new song that you and that girl/boy/tentacled alien danced to all night and you just need to hear it again and again right now.

To put in another way, if you are reading this, on slashdot, right now, then you are not the target audience.

Re:Music on My Cell Phone

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been predicting doom for cellular providers recently. (I work for the one named in the story, however I don't have enough clout to be heard, let alone listened to.)

I lust for the day when Wimax is everywhere, you carry a small phone that connects to the network which makes use of your Vonage account.

Perhaps that is why we are suing Vonage for patent infringement.

Wow - only $2.50 apiece!

[Dark Paladin]

I mean, that would be a huge deal if I couldn't get songs at 40% of the price elsewhere!

*sigh* The sad thing is, people will totally buy into this. I mean, they get it *now* instead of later. I've always been surprised at the ROKR didn't use something and better looking that could have used this, like taking the Razor phone, adding an extra inch for the scroll wheel so it would look like an iPod Nano as a flip phone.

Then Apple could have gotten the "I gotta have it *now*" market with a link to download the songs later (maybe at a 10% increase in price for the "on the road" download service or something). Instead, there was that - thing that was a horrible mix of mobile phone company greed and Apple's frustration with their model.

Well, we'll have to see what happens. If music on cell phones really takes off, I wonder if battery life will have to increase as well to make up for it (and all of the "tv on phones" services that are coming out).\

Of course, this is all just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Re:Wow - only $2.50 apiece!

[moviepig.com]

The sad thing is, people will totally buy into this...

Not so sad, if you look at those people as (nearly) early adopters.

Unlike, say, petroleum products, the supply of music is neither finite nor particularly controlled. Genuine price-wars should eventually occur, leaving a properly calibrated market in their wake.

Maybe teenagers...

[B11]

are the only ones stupid/implusive enough to buy a song at $2.50 (which you can't even you as a ringtone! ARG!).

Barring that, I don't see this taking off. It seems like a "me too" move after the crappy ROKR+iTunes fiasco.

Music on mobiles..?

[Flamekebab]

With portable music players being so small in size and no longer carrying any geek stigma for most of the general public, why do mobile-related industries insist that music on your mobile is The Next Big Thing (tm)?

I used to use my n-gage (quiet at the back..) for listening to music, but my GPRS costs for downloading anything were astronomical!

I certainly don't know of anyone that seriously considers mobile phones in their current incarnation as replacements for separate portable music players.

From TFA - "instant gratification of downloading and owning their own personal collection of high-quality songs"

GPRS was definitely not instant when I still used it.

Whilst GPRS may not be used (I can't say I'm entirely sober enough to go over the article with a fine toothed enough comb to tell), if it isn't then that substantially reduces the number of handsets this will be available to. I'm guessing though that they expect us all to buy new handsets for this Amazing New Feature (!!!).

Re:Music on mobiles..?

[Exocrist]

GPRS isn't used here, rather, it's Sprint's EV-DO service which is supposedly able to reach broadband speeds. So it could potentially be atleast moderately fast, faster than GPRS.

I think one of the most unfortunate things about this is the inability to use it as a ring tone, but most people Sprintel is targeting probably wont mind just paying for a low-fi ringtone for the same price, not realizing that they're getting ripped off.

Also... do these handsets work with regular stereo headphones? or are people supposed to use a single earbud? or just use the phone as a speaker?

Re:Music on mobiles..?

[bhtooefr]

I'm going to speak as to my experiences with my Nokia 6225 and music (the FM radio feature, not anything online).

The 6225 supports stereo. With the correct headset, or the $60 stereo speaker base.

Otherwise, your choices are to use an earbud, or use the speakerphone. However, you have to put on the earbud to use the speakerphone - it serves as the FM antenna.

Pah

[Trogre]

Yet another pay-as-you-go phone service.

What we really need is for someone to port eMule or bitTorrent implementations to mobile phones.

Re:Pah

[spxero]

Or for the price of 2 songs you could buy a USB cable to connect to your phone and put songs on there manually. But for a wireless service, a bittorrent port would be nice as long as you've got an unlimited data plan.

Re:Pah

[SPYvSPY]

This wired article mentions a Nokia phone running a Symbian Gnutella client.

Re:Pah

[anothy]

most of the phones out there make it either impossible or exceedingly difficult to run server software - that is, to open up a port and listen on it. this is at least a limitation of all the software environments i've looked at; i'm not sure whether there's anything technical in the network which inhibits this as well.

What "first"?

[JanneM]

Music store for mobile downloads has been available for some time here in Japan already, under then name "chaku uta" (very approximately "arriving song" I think). In fact, with the manufacturers listed I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same system.

That said, it sucks for me (just like iTunes does). Most of what I listen to is just not available, and I sure hate to pay all over again for the stuff that is. At least my phone allows me to upload my own files as well.

Re:What "first"?

[centinall]

Sorry to sound like an old man, but I just don't get the point of music on your cell phone. I'm not trying to be a troll, but I really just don't get it. I know that it would be better to just have one single device to do all (phone, camera, music, etc...), but with the limitations of memory, battery, portability (as in moving to the PC) I personally wouldn't want this all-in-one wonder. Can someone please explain this to this old man?

Re:What "first"?

[JanneM]

Sorry to sound like an old man, but I just don't get the point of music on your cell phone. I'm not trying to be a troll, but I really just don't get it. I know that it would be better to just have one single device to do all (phone, camera, music, etc...), but with the limitations of memory, battery, portability (as in moving to the PC) I personally wouldn't want this all-in-one wonder. Can someone please explain this to this old man?

I, too, am "an old man" :) And I much prefer having it on my phone.

Yes, it's a bit of a compromise. But I do not use it all day long (when I'm working I need to actually hear my coworkers speaking to me) and I habitually put it into its cradle every night so battery life - which is actually pretty decent - is just not a problem. During normal daily use I never manage to actually move that battery bar from its "full" position.

Moving to and from the PC is the same whatever device you use - or would be if so many devices didn't restrict what formats they accept. I plug in the USB cable and it's just another USB disk-type device to copy files to and from. Things like sound quality too is independent of the device type. It's just a matter of what electronics you put in and what quality design you use, after all. My phone actually sounds better than my older mp3 player, so it's a shame about the sound format; recoding into AAC does degrade the sound.

Camera on the phone is not something I care too much about since I carry an SLR with me, usually. But having one is often immensely practical since you always have it with you. Say you are dismantling a piece of mechanics or electronics - just take a few snapshots along the way and you have documentation on how to put it together again. Or if you're going to the store to get a cable for a certain connector, then just take a picture of the connector for reference.

And actually, recent camera phones aren't all that bad anymore either. They are as good as lower-end cameras of a year or two ago, which means "good enough" for a lot of uses.

Lastly, and the big selling point for me, is that the phone version of things is infinitely better than any device that I end up leaving at home since I'm carrying too much junk already. The radio, music player, and so on may not be the best possible, but at least I have it with me. It's always a compromise, yes, but once you reach "good enough" it ceases to matter.

One Word

[coop0030]

hahahahaha

(omg)

hahahahahaha

Re:One Word

[SPY_jmr1]

That's either 3, 5, or 14 words... But certainly not ONE...

[/tally-nazi]

Infrastructure

[Da3vid]

Barring the price tag of the songs (which you'd think they'd be lower than iTunes to try to compete), does Sprint really think they have the infrastructure necessary to handle this? When I say infrastructure, I mean the combination of enough users and their hardware that could even possibly be interested in this music, and can/are willing to pay 2.50 a song.

-Da3vid-

Re:Infrastructure

[twiggy]

Yes - they have just launched the infrastructure. It's called "Power Vision", which is their cheesy name for EVDO. It's a much faster network infrastructure than their really crappy slow data service they currently offer. It was launched today in concert with this music stuff.

For all the naysayers about the price: I agree with you, $2.50 is insane. However, people are paying that much for ringtones, etc now. The public is not as tech-savvy as you are, and the sheer convenience of downloading music via wireless phone and being able to listen to it in seconds is huge. Is it worth $1.50 more than an iTunes song? No - not to me. However, people can and will pay it - they're already paying that much for ringtones and other garbage. Just look at the success of Jamster.

Unfortunately, a mass of people are going to vote "yes" with their wallets for this, keeping the price high, and a potentially really cool service/application unusable for those of us who can't justify paying that premium.

Re:Infrastructure

[Da3vid]

They should've put the part about EVDO up there with it. How many phones though can support this type of technology with the music? Aside from models, how many people own phones that can do it? My point is that all the factors together added up seem to make a small market to me. In order to be a customer, you need to 1) Have Sprint be your cell phone company (which is generally more expensive than other alternatives) 2) Have a phone that is compatible with the technology including sending/receiving as well as a good way to listen to it 3) Want to listen to music on your phone 4) Willing to pay 2.50 for one song When you cut the market 4 ways, I'm not sure how many people are left. The iPod market is cut into fewer larger segments 1) Be able to afford an iPod 2) Want to listen to music on the go Not that those are good break downs, its just the general idea. I'm also assuming that most high quality phones (such as one that could download and play this music) probably cost nearly as much as an iPod. -Da3vid-

The Hell?

[EdwinBoyd]

My only explanation for the ridiculous price is that they must be looking at the sales of ringtones (which with my carrier can cost up to $3.00 plus download fees). If people are stupid enough to pay that much for a polyphonic midi of a song then they might have a niche business. If they're trying to compete with iTunes they're in for a big surprise. People rarely buy more than a half dozen ringtones whereas ITMS users purchase entire albums at a go.

Is there a music exec sitting in an office somewhere giggling to himself saying "Wait till Apple gets a load of this!!"?

crickets

[Chickenofbristol55]

This is doomed to fail, and here's why. 1) an incredible $2.50 a song 2) Whoever would seriouly listen to music on a phone is nuts 3) Considering the price it shuld be a music video AND a high quality version for computer/mp3 player Ok, so it might not fail, but to put it into perspective the ITMS breaks even for apple, even with its huge success.

Re:crickets

[LaughingCoder]

Actually the phones it runs on have stereo headphones. And I'm pretty sure you get both a mobile download AND a higher quality, CD-burnable desktop download for the $2.50 pricetag.

I carried a music-capable phone for quite some time and it was rather handy. I always had my phone, and I always charged my phone, so it was easy to slip on my earbuds and listen to some tunes when out for a walk, mowing the lawn, whatever. It's really not as bizarre as it first seems. In fact I rather miss it -- I have since changed carriers and their music-capable phones are way too expensive, so now I use my PocketPC as my music player.

Now Hirings:

[muffinass]

Spellings and grammars checking-ers

idiots

[jsmucker]

idiots,idiots,idiots, that all sums it up for me.

Why does this even work?

[obli]

This does catch on, we've had this in Sweden for a little more than a year now, even before iTunes opened over here we had network providers selling music to cell phones.

What's bugging me is that it does seem to work, I just don't get why, some phones don't even have a normal headphone connector, thus no connection to a real speaker. But still the music gets bought, just to be listened to through loudspeakers designed to reproduce no bass at all, I pity them.

Hell Of A Niche

[meehawl]

If people are stupid enough to pay that much for a polyphonic midi of a song then they might have a niche business.

Globally, the revenue of mobile phone ringtone sales dwarfs that of music downloads by around 15:1. That is, the total revenue of *all* music downloads combined (iTMS, Napster, Rhapsody, etc) accounts for less than 10% of the total revenue sales that mobile carriers are raking in from ringtones.

Remember, whereas Apple's sales of iPods are reckoned in single-digit millions per quarter, mobile phone sales are reckoned in hundred of millions per quarter. That's a lot of people buying "one or two" ringtones per phone.

Re:Hell Of A Niche

[miceyman]

This is something people never seem to notice. Anyone know that Crazy Frog ringtone? Guess what--a few months ago, it was the number 1 selling SINGLE (not ringtone) in the UK. That's right. Better selling than Britney Spears and Kanye West. Ringtones are a 1.5 BILLION dollar market. The other thing people never seem to notice is that Apple wasn't first in the mobile market, just like they're not first in any market. The ROKR, just like the iPod, was nothing new. All it does is act as another sideloader for your phone. But enough of that, I don't need to tell people here how much the ROKR blew. But the reason Apple failed so miserably was because they completely underestimated what it takes to compete in the mobile market. I don't know if anyone here has ever worked in the wireless industry, but it is TOUGH. We all know how hard it is to get cross-platform compatibility. In the mobile industry, you have Java phones, Windows phones, Symbian phones, and countless proprietary OS's. I say bravo for even getting TWO phones from different manufacturers to work. Also, for all you Sprint bashers out there, the product's not even really Sprint's. The company powering the backend (content provider as well as app author), Groove Mobile, http://www.groovemobile.net/, has launched on half a dozen carriers across Europe and Asia, including Orange UK. They're no late arrival to the show. And, to be fair, for the $2.50, you also get a DRM'd WMA 128 (that you can then burn then rip if you dislike the DRM so) and a ringtone. Judging by some of the market precedents set by ringtones, I'd say it's not so unreasonable, especially since the labels and publishing societies have to take their cut as well as Sprint.

Re:Hell Of A Niche

[guet]

Ringtones are a public statement. They are like accessories, phone cases, jewellery or designer clothes in that they help define to others who you are. Therefore people are prepared to spend large amounts of money on them for reasons of status. I personally wouldn't but I see why people, particularly teenagers, do. For the same reasons as people buy trainers (US:sneakers) for £100.

Having music on your phone is a completely different market which is based on private listening habits and convenience. At these prices and with these limitations I think it'll go down about as well as WAP and mobile internet did, that is to say, not very well.

In addition to that problem, you need quite a new expensive phone, and you need a lot of memory to store the songs - the memory in phones at the moment is pitiful. One day we will all have one device which functions as a phone/music player/terminal. This is not that day.

No Kidding - this sucks

[Thanatopsis]

This yet another attempt by the labels to screw their customers. I mean who wants to pay 2.5 times for a song just because you are "on the go." Last time I checked I use a WiFi connection to iTunes "on the go." This reminds of the Blue Media debacle a few years ago where the labels came out with this really crappy DRM music format and tried to force it to the retailers. I was director of marketing for Penny Lane Records, a music chain in LA. Yet another sucky product designed to prove they are smarter than Steve Jobs. Oh that's right - they aren't.

iTMS is the Niche, Not Mobiles

[meehawl]

Globally, the revenue of mobile phone ringtone sales dwarfs that of music downloads by around 15:1. That is, the total revenue of *all* music downloads combined (iTMS, Napster, Rhapsody, etc) accounts for less than 10% of the total revenue sales that mobile carriers are raking in from ringtones.

Remember, whereas Apple's sales of iPods are reckoned in single-digit millions per quarter, mobile phone sales are reckoned in hundred of millions per quarter. That's a lot of people buying "one or two" ringtones per phone. Now maybe a lot of people will buy "one or two" tunes per phone. Got doubts? Fire up your spreadsheet and run some numbers...

Also, Apple's revenues per iPod from iTGMS are scant - I think the figure is something around 20 tracks per iPod. So in terms of service revenue, iPods are not very profitable, whereas the *billions* of mobile phones deployed are veritable revenue engines.

Let's see

[MBCook]

We'll ignore the fact that I have an iPod (that I like), and a Windows Mobile handheld PDA (that I could use to listen to music) and occaisionally carry a PSP (which can also listen to music).

Instead, they want me to use my Sprint phone (I am a customer). So instead of paying $1 on iTunes, I can pay 2.5x as much to buy it from Sprint. Now I don't know anything about their DRM (although they MUST have it, they're Sprint).

So what can I listen to this on? They probably have specific phones (elluded to in the article above), but let's look at MY phone. I payed for a Bluetooth LG-325 (crippled, of course, but they forgot to remove DUN :). You know how much memory it conains? 1MB. That's right, 1MB. I bought this phone about a year ago. So at standard MP3 128k (which is about 1MB per minute), that would let me listen to... 1 minute of music. AMAZING.

Wait... no... I forgot about the OS and such. In reality I probably have about 600kb of user accessable memory. So that is... 35 seconds! That's... a ringer!

So I can pay $1 on iTunes and make my own ringer from that (not too hard), or pay $2.50 for something I can't listen to on my iPod, my PSP, or my PDA (I'm guessing), but I can listen to on my cruddy, over priced, crippled, Sprint phone.

Horray Sprint, another win for consumers!

The reviews of the ROKR may have been bad, but that is the discovery of FIRE compared to this deal.

PS: If you're wondering why I still use Sprint: great coverage in my area, and I don't pay for it (cell is through my job).

Re:Let's see

[game kid]

and occaisionally carry a PSP (which can also listen to music)

Damn. I've gotta get one of these highly talented machines.

Re:I have a music playing Sprint phone already!

[Strudelkugel]

Who is the PHB that came up with this idea? I have a Sanyo phone that includes a media player. I also have iTunes. If I want music on the phone, I pick some MP3s made from the iTunes tracks I have purchased and load them into the phone. (It can accommodate a 1Gb miniSD card which allows the phone to serve as a USB drive.)

It seems a bit odd that the marketing PHBs might think there is a demographic out there willing to pay $2.50 for tunes they can easily get for $0.99. People pay for ringtones because they are actually more difficult to acquire. (I'm guessing. I make my own so I've never bought one.)

It certainly will be interesting to see if people are so lazy they will pay 2.5x for songs. I have my doubts.

Streaming Is Apple's Nemesis

[meehawl]

When the carriers finally get enough bandwidth to deploy always-on streaming is when Apple really has to worry. With sufficient bandwidth for streaming, carriers can link up with cable/phone providers to sell "all you can eat", ala Napster-To-Go or Yahoo Unlimited subscription services. Offer to bill people an extra $10 monthly on their mobile bill for unlimited music or personalised radio? That's an easy sell. People can move their playlists between their phones, their HTPCs, their stereos, and their cars. With that system, the idea of paying per-item licence fees ala Apple will seem as quaint as laserdisc. And about as permanent a media investment.

Re:Streaming Is Apple's Nemesis

[bhtooefr]

Hmm... even the $15/mo "Power Vision" package has a streaming audio channel.

Can already do this

[max born]

"Sprint is first carrier in the US to deliver what customers want most in a wireless music store - the instant gratification of downloading and owning their own personal collection of high-quality songs on a device that is always with them," said Len Lauer, chief operating officer for Sprint Nextel.

I have a Sprint Treo 650 and access to the Internet so I can already download music.

When Sprint offers broadband expect them to bundle the service somehow. This might be a bit off topic but it gives you some insight into how they operate. I'm a Sprint customer and I tried to email a video using their email service that came with the phone and I got some bullshit message saying I could purchase the ability to email video for extra $$ -- special offer, etc. You know the kinda of crap. Anyway, I just downloaded a third party email client and sent it to my regular mail. But they try this kinda stuff constantly.

And judging by the complexity of their service plans I guess they'll be trying to charge extra for nothing to unsuspecting idiots. Pretty sure they spend more on marketing than technology.

Wow! All FOUR major lables?

[flinxmeister]

That pretty much ensures that all best music is there!

No wonder they're charging $2.50. If they only dealt with labels then this shows what the labels are going to push Apple for next year.

The situation is getting riper and riper for musicians to tell these folks to go jump and take the primary seat in dealing with digital distrubutors. Sooner or later it will happen.

If labels had any sense they would be charging nickels and dimes for very lightly DRM'd downloads to hold that market.

In related news...

[Spy der Mann]

Spellings and grammars checking-ers

In related news... Jar jar Binks justy gots firesed for badsie performancings.

First? No. First in the US, maybe...

[The Ancients]

We've had music available for purchase via Vodafone for quite some time now. For those interested:

http://vodafone.co.nz/vlive/3g/experience_music.js p?item=experience3g&subitem=music

NZ$3.50 each though - no way I'm going to be paying that...

editors, editors - the world's bigger than the US

[fiddlesticks]

Ach. You missed out the phrase in the FA that says 'the first US music download service' to mobiles

You can do this in the UK - at carrier, handset and 3rd party level,

http://www.3g.co.uk/PR/Oct2005/2095.htm (and loads more)

It's not all bad

[LaughingCoder]

OK, $2.50 per song is pretty pricey - agreed. But there are already services in the UK (Orange has one) that charge 2 pounds per song (~$3), and they don't even bundle a second version of the track which is downloadable on the desktop.

I also hasten to say, the /. group is most decidedly *NOT* the target market for this product. Think teenagers. Think parents of teenagers who are being badgered to get their little cherubs cells phones and iPods. According to the press release, with a 1GB card you can put 1000 songs into the phone. That capacity is very competitive with an iPod nano or iPod mini. Now of course these teenagers can't buy 1000 songs at $2.50 a pop, but there also seems to be some sort of desktop companion application. Maybe they can use that to convert their MP3s to put them on their phone. If that were the case then Sprint might have something. It certainly would blow away the pathetic iTunes phone which has been so roundly reviled.

Re:It's not all bad

[Thanatopsis]

At those prices the market is DECIDELY not teenagers - Yah you can put 1,000 songs on it but that will run you $2500. Most teenagers I know do not have that sort of discretionary income. The market is the mobile professional who doesn't mind "paying a bit more on the go" or at least that's the rational cited. If the product costs 2.5 times as much and doesn't offer any real value (How is it better than iTunes in any way?), it will flop. A big honking red belly flop.

Re:It's not all bad

[LaughingCoder]

I think you missed an important qualifier:

Maybe they can use that to convert their MP3s to put them on their phone. If that were the case then Sprint might have something.

So IF you could transcode your MP3s and put them on the phone and IF it could hold 1000 songs, THEN I think Sprint would have something pretty cool.

Re:It's not all bad

[Thanatopsis]

Sorry but no where does it indicate that in the article. I mean sure it would be cool. I am just willing to bet that it doesn't do that as you would eliminate the revenue stream that make the phone possible. How do you make money off the phone if people aren't buying the songs?

Re:It's not all bad

[Thanatopsis]

The article highly suggests that you cannot load your own MP3s on it.

"For example, using an optional 1GB removable memory card, customers will be able to store up to 1,000 songs purchased from the Sprint Music Store. Downloads are expected to take about 30 seconds per track."

The key phrase there is "purchased from the Sprint Music Store." It's entirely a closed box. I mean what's the revenue stream if you can load your own MP3s on it?

Re:It's not all bad

[ksheff]

Think parents of teenagers who are being badgered to get their little cherubs cells phones and iPods.

Yeah, they can badger all they want. They're not getting any of those from me unless they put down the game controller and get a part time job. Not surprisingly, they shut up for a little while and keep playing their games. The target market is the teenagers' grandparents. They are the ones that buy all the crap for the little ingrates in the first place. You'd be surprised how much of the X-Box/PS2 market is financed by bingo winnings.

Re:It's not all bad

[LaughingCoder]

Well, it is a high end phone (~$400), so they make more profit from that. Also, people who buy high end phones are more likely (and able) to use other pay-for services. Lastly, if you get people accustomed to listening to their music on their phone, you have a good chance of selling them a song or two each month on an impulse, gotta have it now, purchase. Yeah, $400 is alot for a phone, but it's not alot more than buying an iPod AND a phone (especially a "cool" phone).

Re:It's not all bad

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really getting sick of people quoting this "2.5 times as much" line. You get a high quality version of the song for your computer, and you get essentially a rington version. Go do a search for ringtones, and you will find that they generally run two to three dollars. And people are snapping them up like hotcakes.

And if you think teenagers aren't the main market, then you haven't been around any teenagers lately. Kids all over are running up sometimes $100 a month on $0.05 text messages to each other. To say that they don't have this kind of discretionary income is also fairly assinine; a teenager may not have as much income as an adult, except generally all or most of that income is discretionary. Living with mom and dad means no rent, no food costs (except going out to eat with your friends) no utilities, no car payments, no insurance payments, they generally don't have to pay for most of their clothes, personal hygene products, furniture, bedding, cleaning products, garbage bags, medicine, dishes, and the many many more things you must buy for yourself as an adult. Sure, teenagers may pay for a couple of these things, but the vast majority are covered by mom and dad. Teenagers primary expenses are discretionary.

Re:It's not all bad

[guet]

There is no way they'll let you download songs from your computer, this is a phone company we're talking about.

And 1GB is enough for 1000 songs only at a bit-rate that will make them sound like they're played underwater. The original ipod had 4GB, and claimed to fit 1000 songs.

Re:It's not all bad

[LaughingCoder]

Actually according to an article on Ars they DO allow you to download your own songs to your phone. Also, they make the same statement: 1GB = 1000 songs, which translates to a 32kbps encode rate. I doubt they would release songs at that bitrate that sounded terrible (especially at $2.50 a pop) so I would withold my judgement on sound quality. Along those lines, I wonder if they let you encode at different rates when putting music on your phone (trade capacity for quality for more discerning listeners).

NOW LAUGHINGS -- ME

[krappie]

I was wondering if I was the only one that had to read this headline about 5 times slowly trying to make sense of it.

Airtime not included

[chiph]

Sure, $2.50 is a lot, compared with other music services [cough cough iTMS]. But what will inflate it even more is the cost of the airtime to download a 3mb music file, even at 3G data rates.

Don't forget the state & federal taxes (univeral access fee, sales tax, facilities recovery fee, etc. etc.) Also - the music you just bought won't fit on your typical SIM card, so if you change phones, guess what, you get to buy it all over again.

This is shaping up to be such a *deal*, oh yes...

Chip H.

Re:Airtime not included

[oscillation9]

1. There are no airtime charges for Sprint's data services, unless you're paying per kilobyte. Data access is flat rate, for the most part. 2. This service is aimed at the new "Power Vision"(EV-DO) handsets, which average 400-700kbit/s with peak at 2.4Mbit/s. 3. There are no SIM cards involved; files are transferable via the USB cable included with all EV-DO handsets. All said, yeah, $2.5/track is a bit pricey, but it's not aimed at iTMS users, it's aimed at the ringtone crowd. That is, the crowd that doesn't make their own tones in the first place.

Who will buy it?

[RX8]

I read about this at Designtechnica too: http://news.designtechnica.com/article8671.html The problem is that the music phones out there sucks. I think the Sony Ericsson W800i is probably the best so far.

What a premium...

[color of static]

... to show everyone around you that you are stupid enough to pay $2.50 for a single song. For that price I want permanent/physical media atleast (5 songs would be $12.50 for a pretty lame CD). What percentage goes the artist? Is it even measurable?

Biting

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Medial

Please refrain from using "take a bite out of apple" in every single article relating on "attacks" towards Apple. I mean, it isn't like it hasn't been used before. Trust me, it isn't creative nor is it funny anymore.

Seriously.

Thanks,
The Public

Vodafone

[barnaclebarnes]

Vodafone New Zealand has this already. It costs $3.50NZD per track and you only have access to the song on that particular mobile. Lose your mobile and you lose the song. You can't transfer it to a PC either. /b

wimax will kill it all

[Jon_E]

Cell phones always seemed like an interim market until widespread highspeed network access becomes affordable. Who cares about another service to try and hook you into a lame portable network access subscription .. what i really want is free wimax access, then IP phones become commodity and then we can really talk about features.

Data rates

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, this is aimed at the lucky few who happen to be in the 75 markets nationwide where they're rolling out EV-DO. Avg speed, according to the marketing department there, is 400-700 Kbps, with a max of 2.0 Mbps. It's no cable modem, but it beats the pants off of 9.6 Kbps. Now for the fun part. I currently reside in one of these markets. According to the junk mail I've received, I can get 128 Kbps for the low low price of $59.99/mo. No thanks, I'll pass. With all the open wi-fi available in these high population density markets, all Apple would need is a wi-fi iPod and iTMS built into the iPod firmware. I'm sure that's next up to bat after the recently released vPod. The Sprint service looks great on paper if you've got loads of cash, but bps ain't everything. Tell me what kind of ping time to expect when bouncing around on your 'wireless broadband' eh Sprint?

iTunes incompatible with the rest of the world

[geekee]

"Which is precisely why iTunes is such a comparatively elegant solution. Who needs yet another music management program? iTunes will sync your music to your phone (provided it is a ROKR...they need an iTunes RAZR immediately).

No one needs to sync music manually. Why SprinTel expects you to do so is beyond me."

Explain to me how iTMS purchased music will play on a cell phone that doesn't support fairplay.

Re:iTunes incompatible with the rest of the world

[damiam]

It won't, of course (excepting various hacks), but any cell phone capable of syncing with iTunes will almost certainly support FairPlay.

Idiots don't stop at 19.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know quite a few fraternity boys and sorority girls well into their 20s who love spending daddy's money on ringtones every month. I've seen more Mercedes than Volkswagens driving the wrong way on one way streets. It would be nice to think that all dumbasses are teenagers, but some don't ever escape the stranglehold of dumbassdom.

$2.50

[ajservo]

Well, let's see...

I can spend my $2.50 to listen to a compressed DRM'd mono version of the Black Eyed Peas' latest musical nightmare.

-OR-

I can go buy a gallon of gas.

What to do...

OH! I can save the $2.50 and walk to work! That'll do!

Re:$2.50

[tomstdenis]

What I don't get ... is for 0.99$ you can buy legit copy that sounds a "tad" better than the "beeps" and "boops" that is crappy ringtone satire...You probably pay data and air usage for the download!!! This is why telcos are slowly but surely getting assraped by all new technologies out there [cough cough voip].

They think they can just charge whatever the fuck they want and people will "just put up with it".

Answer: No they won't.

Tom

Not the first

[greggman]

Sorry, but there are already music to cell phone download services in Korea, Japan and other places. Sprint's is hardly the first

Reason for the $2.50 price

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference in the cost between say Itunes and this service is the license. You get a license (and are provided different files for) one copy to play on your phone, and another for your PC. I don't know the format of the PC version, but I think there are provisions for saving it to a mobile device other than the phone.

Also, this does allow "grazing" of sound clips and some streaming Sirrius radio stations with the purchase of the phone.

Another thing to think about, Sprint has had a public developer site available for years. As soon as somebody downloads and writes a micro-java based player that access the EV-DO stack, a mobile open audio player wouldn't be far behind.

The only limitation is the fact that almost all user-runtime applets don't know how to access the highest functions on the phone .. an open source music player would drain the batteries like mad, just like several of the freely available phone based html browser / parsers.

Not at $2.50 a pop

[fz00]

They have to be joking if they think they can take on iTunes at 150% higher. At this price point, it's worth it to carry a second device. It's not even a nice try!

Free streaming audio on cellphones

[Nahor]

I'd like to add that Sprint has a partnership with Orb Networks too, which does something in the same category.

With Orb, which is free by the way, you can streaming your music directly from your home computer to your cellphone if it can handle 3GP, Real or Windows Media format.
And as an "added bonus", you get free video streaming. And if your home computer has a TV tuner, free TV streaming.
And you can view your photos that are on your home computer on your cell too (nice to show your latest family pictures to your parents).

And yes, it also works on non-Sprint cellphones... and on PDA... and on desktop computers :)

To be fully honest, I have to say that I work for Orb Networks but it's really a nifty product worth checking, especially since it's free.

Launchings?

[adavidw]

WTF?

You are missing the point...

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone is confusing the Sprint musicstore with ringtones. The music downloaded from the musicstore are NOT ringtones. They are pretty decent quality AAC+ encoded songs. The phones come with decent stereo ear buds. Yeah, its more expensive that iTunes. But, you do get the convenience of downloading music no matter where you are (within coverage area). You can be listening to your music, and if a call comes in, you can either take the call, or ignore it. If you take the call, the music pauses, and you can resume when the call is over. You can also load any mp3's onto the memory card, and then choose to play those, so the phone is not limited to playing downloaded songs.

Dual

[scottgfx]

I used to have one of these...

http://www.compassnet.com/concept/tables/1214.htm

It was my brother's... It was purchased from a TurnSyle department store in Indianapolis, IN.

Yes, there are market for this

[rahard]

Many of you have an American-centric point of view, where iTunes rules. But, in Asia, cellphone rules! In Indonesia alone, there era 30 million cellphone usuers. Compare that to around 8 million Internet users. 30 million is a large number. How be is the population in your city? I could imagine that the market in China and India would be much BIGGER! Although, US$2.50 is a bit too much. My informal polling (in one of my blogs) showed that people are willing to pay US 10c for a song. That's their willingness to pay (WTP). I'd say, price it at 10c, or even less (price it like SMS), and youngsters will download without thinking. So, yes there is (are?) a market for it. In fact, I am excited. I've been thinking about this service for about 6 months. Now, I am starting to write the requirement (equipments, software, billing system, all the work). We are thinking of offering the service in a small mall first (create our own small cell). Any hints?

Nitpick

[Mr_Silver]

with the upcoming release of the first music download service direct to mobile phones.

I know Slashdot is based in the US and has a very large base of individuals who are based there - but I do think it is worth pointing out that in the UK, O2 were the first with direct download of music to mobile phones and T-Mobile were the first with direct download of music which required no additional hardware or software (WAP discovery and OTA download) - both of which were in order of years before this announcement.

I have no doubt that other countries probably were quicker off the mark than the UK too, so it would be only fair that in the future the editors ensured that statements claiming to be the first at something either were verified or stated in which terratory they were first in.

In this case, it implies the first everywhere, which isn't so.

Development of PBNWC containerisation & storag

[tashammer]

I take the view that all nuclear waste ought to be inserted into carefully selected politicians and bureaucrats. The P & B containers may then be transported to a desolate place. But, and this is crucial, the quantity of PBNWC's has to be calculated so that, periodically, they will become self-cleansing in a thermonuclear kind of way. Another approach might well be to use deep mine shafts in isolated locations. These will, when loaded with sufficient quantities of PBNWC's explode thus creating a large underground chamber which will, in turn, allow for greater stoarge capacity. It would be expected that the selection of both the politician and of the bureaucrat will provide an unlimited source of containers. The steps outlined above ought to allow the core of this planet to remain hottish for the forseeable future. Into this we ought to be able to sink pipes so as to benefit from core-based geothermal energy. Thus we might then rightly be able to assert that power derives from politics and bureaucracy being located in the most efficient place. And the world will truely run on bullsh1t. Thank you.

This just in

[LaughingCoder]

There is another article in Ars Technical (http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051031-550 3.html) that says:

Users will also be able to copy music purchased via the store to their PCs and burn it to CD. In addition, they will be able to load 16-32MB of their own music on to the new phones if they choose.

I *assume* the 16-32MB *limit* is because that is the size of the bundled cards. So it looks like you CAN put music you already own into your phone. And if you did put in a 1GB card you can have a pretty decent portable music player that is also a phone. I think that makes this a much more significant announcement. I'm surprised they don't play that angle up more. Seems to me that Sprint has 2 distinct advantages over the iTunes phone: no 100 song limit and the ability (if you want) to buy a song instantly over-the-air.

Ringtones

[Cyn]

As it sends it to your phone, and also gives you a high (read: normal) quality version for your computer, this is probably a good price point for those fools^Wpeople who pay $2 - $3 to get ringtones - IF it can be used as a ringtone direct from the phone, or more easily (otherwise they'd just use their computer and set them up from itunes or mp3s)

I don't know anyone who buys ringtones, but since I hear a lot of annoying shit whenever I'm out in public, I know there are plenty of these people.

You don't have to pay the 2.50

[mc900ftjesus]

$2.50 is the charge to buy music over-the-air from Sprint. The phone, which is EVDO capable (think DSL speed), uses SD cards that you can put music on yourself.

And you can use headphones, WTF would you consider using the phone's internal speaker or be stupid enough to think that's how you're supposed to use it? I thought the /. crowd was smart enough to look twice.

Overpriced Much?

[iolaus]

Good lord, How high does the price of a single song have to be before people just go out and buy the CD? I know most people say things like "what if you only like one song on the CD?" but the truth is if I really like one song I usually like (or grow to like) many others on the CD. Personally, even if there were no other alternatives to get music (radio, iTunes, CDs, pirating) I wouldn't be caught dead paying $2.50 for a song. At that point I'd just save some bucks and go to a concert now and then! But... maybe that's just me and maybe there are a ton of music addicts out there that can afford to drop $250 to have a relatively small library of music on their phone.