Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

AT&T Deal With eMusic Excludes iPhones

Posted by kdawson on from the you-scratch-my-back dept.

ubermiester writes "ArsTechnica reports that AT&T has inked a deal with eMusic, a direct competitor to Apple's iTunes music store. eMusic specializes in independent artists and offers DRM-free content for direct download. For a monthly fee (the number of tracks one can download per month depends on the package) the site's catalog will be available to AT&T customers using Samsung and Nokia handsets, but not the iPhone."

3 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Uh... by His+Shadow · · Score: 5, Informative
    eMusic is a website. You subscribe to it and pay a monthly fee for a certain number of downloads. Then you download the songs to your iTunes and sync them. The AT&T deal has users pay prices many times higher to get the utility of downloading songs directly to your phone

    What, exactly, is the story here? That Boo Hoo, I have to continue to pay the much lower cost of 7$US for 40 songs and sync it to my iPhone using iTunes?

    Now who is going to be hit with the "cost of cool"?

    --

    Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos

  2. Easy choice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Given the choice between the iPhone+iTunes and some other phone + eMusic, I for one would choose the Apple solution hands down.

  3. It's not about feature lists by Infonaut · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's see, common features the iPhone lacks:

    I'm sure you use all of those features to their full potential. But a feature count is a terrible way to determine whether a product really is any good in actual use. Apple has targeted ease of use and overall user experience with the iPhone. Frankly I don't know if they've hit the mark with the iPhone or not, because I've never used one. But just because it doesn't have 25 features that I may or may not ever use doesn't mean I'm going to dismiss it out of hand.

    as much as I really love gadgets

    The iPhone isn't a device for you. It's for people who are tired of smartphones that aren't smart, and of devices that are jammed full of features yet still aren't satisfying to use. Again, I don't know if it fulfills its promise, but it doesn't make sense to judge it a success or failure on a feature count. It is much more useful to judge it against its promise, which is to provide a smartphone-type device that non-techies will enjoy using.

    This reminds me of the iPod rollout, and all the comments about how pathetic it was in comparison to the Nomad, et al.

    --
    Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ