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Digital
New all-you-can-eat mobile music service to launch in US
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 21 December 2010
A US mobile operator called Cricket Wireless yesterday confirmed plans to launch an all-you-can-eat music service in January, offering pay-as-you-go customers access to unlimited downloads and a load of other mobile services for $55 a month, which seems quite expensive, but possibly not in the context of the average mobile fee in the States.
It’s not clear how much of that monthly fee is actually allocated to the music part of the service, but the idea is that to the customer the extra download subscription fee is hidden.
Although sounding a little like Nokia’s Comes With Music, the Cricket Wireless service, to be called Muve, operates more like the original (v2) Napster. Downloads come with DRM which means they can only be played while a Muve subscription is active, once a subscription lapses the tracks become unplayable. Also, unlike Comes With Music, the tracks are only downloaded to the mobile, there is no option to also listen to a tune on a PC.
Cricket Wireless bosses say the latter point isn’t a weakness because many of their customers don’t own a PC or have a broadband connection at home, and therefore use their mobile phone as their primary device for accessing the net. They hope that added benefits like in built Shazam, curated playlists, the facility to share music with other subscribers and super fast downloading will all make the service more attractive.
All four majors and a bunch of indies are on board for the launch next month.
