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Sprint Launchings Music to Mobile Downloads

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the when-you-have-to-have-that-song-right-now dept.

* * 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."

7 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. selection down, price up by yagu · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.)

    1. Re:selection down, price up by kubevubin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:selection down, price up by GlassHeart · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.

  2. How's the quality? by ankarbass · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
  3. Music on My Cell Phone by queenb**ch · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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

    --
    HDGary secures my bank :/
  4. Wow! All FOUR major lables? by flinxmeister · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  5. Re:Airtime not included by oscillation9 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.