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Cingular's Free Music
PreacherTom writes "Music on one's mobile phone is nothing surprising: in fact, it is the entire principle of the upcoming iPhone. Downloading it for free is a different matter; both Verizon and Sprint's service directs to a proprietary store and charges up to $2.50 per song. Cingular plans on taking another route, having announced that they are gearing up to offer free music downloads to compatible phones. They hope to make up the difference through fees from the music subscription services for each new reference. The catch: a $15 per month fee."
It's free as long as you pay $180 per year. Sorry if I'm overly excited.
"Free" for the low low cost of $15 a month......doesn't sound very free to me
Call me a purist but a $15/month isn't "free" - no matter how you try and spin it, free is $0 a month, forever...
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
so actually it's not free, it's fifteen bucks a month.
last time i checked, "free" meant "no bucks a month".
Last I heard it works in conjunction with Napster (so if you have Napster it works while mobile). So, it took the "mobile music library" idea Zone would ahve had and went with it. Golf clap where it's due. But phones have, at most, 2 Gigs of storage space (on external cards). So this really isn't effective for the mass music lovers with gigs of music. A nice little feature for anyone that uses Cingular and Napster. That being said, I wished they focused more on what counts: phone service. I CAN PLAY DRM'D MP3'S BUT YOU WON'T GIVE ME MY 3G NETWORK!?
In Soviet Russia, dots slash you!
Write to me now for FREE information on how you can make money by sitting on your ass! Send me $10 and I'll tell you how...
This guy's the limit!
Not Free as in Freedom
Not Free as in Beer
Free as in '$15 a month'
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
Or, in my case, cheap. My phone has bluetooth. As such, I can just transfer mp3s from my computer to my phone via bluetooth. Although the question arises: why would I do such a thing when the audio output just plane sucks on a phone (my phone at least)?
This is obviously some new definition of the word free with which I have been previously unfamiliar.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
You know, free as in beer?
(No, I don't really believe that's what they meant.)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Cingular will allow people to download music to compatible phones for free, although consumers will pay a monthly charge in the range of $15 for the ability to download songs from those services to a portable music player.
Wow. Never have I seen that pricing scheme before. Especially not at Napster.
Speaking of Napster... how are they getting along?
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word 'free' that I wasn't previously aware of.
...that defines "too much damn hassle and expense to listen to a couple songs while out and about?"
Honestly, this stand on one leg, confirm your DRM identity, rub stomach, pat head, open wallet wider and face Mecca in order to listen to a fricken' song is getting stoopid.
Note: "stoopid" is an order of magnitude worse that "stupid."
$15 a month? And people complain about Tivo fees.
The real method to get free music on most mid-priced phones, is hold the phone up toward a cheap speaker and hit "record" on the voice memo feature. On the phone's crappy mono speaker, the end result will be indistinguishable from if you somehow imported lossless uncompressed PCM data from the studio masters.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Ah, this is obviously some strange usage of the word 'free' that I wasn't previously aware of.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
So now we have:
Free as in beer
Free as in liberty
and
Free as in "Only $15 per month"!
The US mobile phone market is crap. There is far too much vendor lock-in. The European markets are much more sophisticated than that in the US, because of the competition that was prevalent there. Hell, everyone I knew when I lived in the UK and Germany had had phones for years, and I left in 2001. Since arriving in North America I have yet to get a phone, becuae the plans are ridiculously restrictive and the services available are only now equivalent to what I had in Europe.
There is focus in the North American markets now on adding music. I am skeptical that it will have much impact. The plan outlined in this article is not really free music anyway. Its just another sort of sucscription model. Such that, if the consumer switches companies, he loses his music. Companies seem to think that people are openly willing to lock in. I think people do it grudgingly. Adding another aspect to be lost in the case of switching, in my opinion, makes the deal worse. If you want or need to switch now, you need to buy out the contract (unless you wait for it to run its course), buy a new phone, and re-buy your music.
I am unsure of the status of music on phones in Europe, it was not wide-spread when I was there, anyone have any insight?
As for the Apple iPhone, it may be a success, not because of the benefits or music on your phone, but merely because of Apple brand power. People like Apple, and like how they look when using Apple products. ((This is not to say that Apple make bad products, I think quite the opposite))
You really can't beat buying used cd's on Amazon and ripping them to your phone. I don't typically find a new artist every month that would justify paying 15$ a month for this service. I'd rather buy one cd I like for a possible 5$ a month used than pay this fee every month when I may not find a cd. Fact of the matter is that there's not too much good music out anymore and if there is, a lot of time it won't be on these music services initially. That's another viable point, what type of selection will they have and will it expand quickly? Maybe they'll be smart and not offer the new K-Fed cd ;)
I will forever be a student.
For $15 per month, I can get FREE music?
I guess that means I'm getting FREE cable, water, gas, electricity, car, house, etc.
I feel so FREE!
-ch
This whole article sux for saying "Free Music" when it's anything but. The editors should have put the $15/month fee in the first sentence, not the last one.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Nothing in life is gratis...
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
I didn't read the article but it sounds like he knows what he is talking about.
So downloads to your phone are free, but if you want those songs on your MP3 player as well, you'll need to shell out $15 a month.
The one redeeming quality seems to be that it doesn't add cingular DRM on top of Napster and Yahoo DRM - they're willing to share your blood\h\h\h\h\hmoney instead of adding their own tap. As with all DRM services, the scary part seems to be this quote:
If you have tried data on Cingular without an unlimited plan, you know how un-free this could be. Personally, this is what I've stacked up to solve this problem.
Cingular 2125 Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone.
$20/month for unlimited data.
Orb at home on my media machine.
Shure i2c-t headset for listening to audio and taking calls.
Then you just stream the data to yourself. Sure, it's harder to actually buy a track, but I only have 256MB of memory on my phone. I'm not going to fill that up with downloaded music.
The simple rule is TANSTAAFL
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
I wouldn't even take it for free if it has DRM. All DRM is garbage, even when free. Paying for DRM is outright stupidity.
All I can say is: use Orb.
The only disadvantage is that you need a XP machine at home. But then, you can stream all your music that you already have, no need to buy it again. And it's not just music, you can also stream video, tv, photo, .... And on any device, not just your Cingular phone. And it's really free, no monthly fees or things like that.
No way I'm going to pay Cingular for something so limited!
Everything is advertised as free here and it never is. There is always a fine print and as times go it becomes smaller and smaller and harder to find, read and understand. Such thing should be considered as false advertisement and there should be laws against it.
This service looks exactly like many other music subscription services out there just that it's on the phone. For many people it makes sense to have a subscription than to purchase songs but not necessary for everyone.
There are many people that fail to understand the concept of music subscription. The best analogy I could find is a Comcast TV subscription with OnDemand. Many people are paying for TV subscriptions and many are already paying now for subscription music (and the number is growing). Others prefer to buy DVDs and others like to buy their music (CDs and digital downloads). I believe both ways of getting online digital music will survive and will thrive.
This just in, talking on the phone is free if you have the $60/month voice plan. And wireless internet is free if you sign up for the 40/month data plan. All said and done you can have access to music and internet and voice services for free if you pay the $150/month.
A $15/month fee on a cell phone bill is pretty steep. Most people have a $30-60 monthly bill and this would be a big increase to them. So I'm thinking this price will fall or the service will fail.
But what can you do once you (purchase) and download the song? Can you move it to another phone, when you upgrade or get a replacement? What is the storage capability of the phones that can justify the number of downloads that would justify the monthly cost? Offload to iPod or mp3 player, etc?
I'll buy into these services when they give me choices of format/quality and lifetime license to redownload the same media that I paid for.
Otherwise, why not buy the cd so I can "own" it forever? And/or then "steal" it off the net to save me the trouble of ripping it myself?
These fools still don't get it...and I'm not necessarily talking about the companies.
yes, it seems incorrect - but they have worded it correctly to make the whole statement true. It is, in fact, free to download the songs - however, it costs $15/month for the right to do so. So you aren't paying to download a song, you are paying for the right to download a song. Subtle difference - makes the statement correct.
Having said that, I won't be opting in for this feature at any point in the near or distant future.
In addition, I do think this is a step up from the "2.50 / download" fee that the other companies provide. This is a better deal if you download > 6 songs a month - which I bet most people do.
"i stand on the edge of destruction" -shai hulud
Are there data costs on top of the $15?
Free as in Buttsecks?
Microsoft, Apple, HP, Dell, and Gateway all announced their products are going to be free from now on. No charges at all! They hope to make up for this by "each new reference" (whatever the hell that means).
Oh, and the catch is that it's not actually free, but still costs the same amount of money or maybe even more, but it's set up as a subscription.
How did this make it up on slashdot? For anyone who believes this nonsense - I have some "free" products I would like to "give" to you for $99.95/mo.
or else!
It is ironic that Microsoft has stopped selling downloads from its site and Cingular has a music service allow people to purchase from them or other then to transfer the music to their cell phones. --- Vote for your favorite cellular phone: --- Men Vote Here - The Best Cellular Phone --- Women Vote Here - The Best Cellular Phone
Cingular has offered free music for years under the codename "customer service". You get a couple of hours for free* before someone interrupts.
* Normal airtime rates apply.
Will it sound good? Napster's quality was so bad that it gave me a headache!
No, I will not work for your startup
Which everybody thinks Heinlein invented because they first read about it in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. That's one of my favorite books, but that particular thing in it has always irritated me. Several reasons.
First, it's typical geekish language abuse. You take a elegant, memorable, easy-to-understand saying, "There is no free lunch," which Alistair Cooke once suggested should be America's motto, and you convert it into a klunky, unpronouncable, hard-to-remember acronym. But of course an acronym is more cool than a phrase!
Second, although the sentiment is one I agree with, the saying kind of distorts history. The saying comes from the fact that a lot of bars used to (maybe still do in some parts of the country) have signs that say "Free Lunch." Nowadays, this "lunch" usually consists of a jar of pickled eggs, hence the equation of the free lunch with something phony. But originally, the free lunch was a serious meal: in the 1870s, you could go into a bar, buy a whisky or a beer, and have a plate of roast beef and potatoes (or something of similar tastiness) thrown in as a sort of marketing gimmick. This was possible because food was extremely cheap in relation to other kinds of goods. Which might sound terribly cool, until you remember that in those days, most Americans were farmers, and the low prices they got for the food they grew or raised left them in permanent poverty — literally "dirt poor".
Finally, TANSTAAFL gets trotted out over and over by all those libertarian schoolyard revolutionaries who think that the Free Market is the solution to all their problems. That's as brainless as the philosophy of the socialist schoolyard revolutionaries of the 60s, who thought that the Free Market was the cause of all their problems.
i thought cellphones were ment for communication?? cellphones = mp3 players.. ipod = god, myspace = childrens babysitter what the fuck is going on?