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

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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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

[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.

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.

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!!"?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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: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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.