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Will You Stream Or Download Your Mobile Music?

Posted by timothy on from the because-streaming-is-perfectlly-reliable dept.

mikp writes "In a David-and-Goliath style fight, small music companies are battling it out with established behemoths to see who can own the future of mobile music. Spotify, the Europe-based music streaming company, is about to launch its iPhone app and has plans to develop it for other mobile platforms soon. In a preview, Spotify shows how you can cache songs to your iPhone so that you don't always need a connection but the songs don't remain on your iPhone permanently. Nokia, on the other hand, has just announced two more music phones that will feature Comes With Music, an unlimited music-download service that involves a one time fee, which is part of the price of the CWM phone, and lets you download music for free (and you get to keep it) for a year. The question remains, are people more likely to stream or download music on their mobile phones?"

4 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. ComesWithMusic ... Not in the U.S. It Don't by eldavojohn · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nokia, on the other hand, has just announced two more music phones that will feature Comes With Music, an unlimited music-download service that involves a one time fee, which is part of the price of the CMW phone, and lets you download music for free (and you get to keep it) for a year.

    Am I the only person that went to the CWM page and slid the "Please Select Your Location" bar up and down for about 5 minutes? The United States of America does not appear to be on the list. Is this music going to be restricted by what region you live in? Because when I click UK they say they asked the best in the music industry to sign a deal with them and they all said yes ... are they talking UK only? How did they handle royalties and copyright fees? Is that why there's no US?

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:ComesWithMusic ... Not in the U.S. It Don't by amicusNYCL · · Score: 4, Informative

      Am I the only person that went to the CWM page and slid the "Please Select Your Location" bar up and down for about 5 minutes?

      Dude, there's only 10 items in the list, and they're alphabetized. Did you read each one for 30 seconds to see if it said "United States"? If you click on "Can't Find Your Location" you go to the regular Nokia store where there's another location dropdown with more options, but still no US. It also has a section titled "Available In These Countries", still no US. There's also a box to enter your email to get notified when the store becomes available in another country (the US is listed in that box).

      So yeah, there's no US support. They don't bother to explain why.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  2. What's the difference? by Hurricane78 · · Score: 4, Informative

    They are both downloads. the only difference that with one, it stays longer on the computer. So the question should be: "How long do you (want to) keep your music?". Which of course is dependent on the music itself.

    I listen to Shoutcast radios, for which I happen to have made a StreamRipper extension to decide to only keep what I want to keep, before or after I listened to it. With remote control, and Amarok integration. It's working well for me, but feel free to do with it whatever you like: http://navid.radiantempire.com/pub/armSR4amarok&listen.stream.tar.bz2
    The only rule — apart from the GPL license — is, to tell me when you improved it, or found a bug. :)
    (There. That is the power of Linux! Have an idea? Let it grow! Let it grow around you. Yeah, that should be the Linux slogan: "Linux: Let your ideas grow!" Or something alike. :)

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  3. Re:spotify by icegreentea · · Score: 4, Informative

    Spotify is working on North American licensing rights. It's the same up here in Canada. Basically, our licensing is sufficiently different from European models and such that its just extra work that takes more time. Their a Europe based service, makes sense Europe gets all their shit first.

    Of course, you can spoof it's location detection right now by using a UK (or other suitable) based proxy.

    And don't bitch about it. Fucking Hulu still hasn't reached Canada. And I can't watch all of Colbert Report and Daily Show on their websites either.