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

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: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: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.

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.