MusicStation vs iPhone: unlimited music downloads Poor Apple
Filed under: Cell Phone Information, Cell Phones, Music, News | By: Daniel
Posted on: June 15, 2007 | 6 Comments
This is surely bad news for iPhone makers Apple as 30 mobile operators and four of the biggest music groups have teamed up with British firm Omnifone under a new service called MusicStation.
This could steal iPhones thunder as cell phone users will get direct access to download an unlimited number of tracks to their phones for a small weekly fee of 2.99 euros or 1.99 pounds, to top it off it will only take 15 seconds a song download and they are targeting 100 million phones within a year and will offer over 1 million songs.
This is not just some rumor or story that will disappear as this new MusicStation service has partnered with the biggest names in the music industry and phone industry.
So it looks like very bad news for the iPhone, but then a study in 2006 showed that 44% of phone users had no interest in downloading music to their mobiles.
Via techcrunch
So tell us, do you download music to your phone?
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Surely you don’t think that people might not like having 2000 songs on their phone with no easy way to organize and access them? And people just love to pay for music they don’t get to put on their home computers and keep forever, right?
Why is this bad news for Apple? iTunes isn’t available for non-Apple phones, and MusicStation isn’t available the iPhone. The iPhone will sell millions no matter what anyone else does and anyway, MusicStation doesn’t seem to do anything that previous music rental services did: it still ‘features’ exploding media.
Meanwhile, iTunes users will continue to use their PCs and Macs as centers to store and organise music, podcasts, videos etc to play on iPhones as well as iPods, Apple TVs, burnt CDs and their PCs/Macs. MusicStation can’t match that eco-system and no bulk signing up of cellphone stalwarts will change that.
The advanced nature of the mobile generation, outside of the US, is likely to be just one clear reason why MusicStation is being launched to the rest of the world, and not the US.
As Apple is launching iPhone at the end of June to the US market, with no dates specified for the rest of the world as yet, Omnifones announcement is clearly no distraction to the US market or to the millions whose personal & personalised choice of device is important them.
What MusicStation has, over and above the warp-factor download efficiencies and cool functionality which previous music rental services lacked, are agreements/partnerships with the Big-4 music enterprises, the primary device manufacturers and mobile operators - plus the reach factor to 100m+ mobile devices.
Apple devotees will likely remain so, but the rest of the planets mobile generations will now have greater choice & access to music on-the-move.
Why do you need to be an ‘Apple devotee’ to use iTunes - it’s just another music store and music management program right? yet there it is dominating everywhere - inside and outside the US. It ain’t ‘devotees’ driving that success.
And as good as the features MusicStation has - isn’t it still a fact that once you stop paying the ‘rent’, you’ve lost your music? The music rental model has so far been unsuccessful, maybe this could turn that around but I remain sceptical. Of course I haven’t used it so I know nothing.
I’m using a Nokia N73 and my previous phone was an SE V800, both pretty good phones, 3G etc. Don’t know if that puts me in the ‘Advanced generation’ but from what I’ve seen of the iPhone - that’s the device I want more than anything Nokia, SE and the rest have now or in the pipeline. I’m a long-time iTunes user, what with being on my 2nd iPod and I haven’t been impressed with the media apps on either phone OR the ones available for download.
My point is that MusicStation will have to be really REALLY good - compellingly better than iTunes - to make a dent in online music sales - just being available for lots of phone models and having the big 4s backing aren’t necessarily good enough reasons to make cell-phone users take to it - or make Apple shake in their boots.
This article is inane and moronic. Reads like someone just taking potshots at the (deservedly) market leader in digital music distribution and soon to be leader in smartphones. Apple success is rooted in the fact that their engineering whether hardware or software is unequaled by any technology co short of maybe Google. They spend an enormous amount of effort and resources in making sure that whatever they deliver just plain works well both for newbies and technocrati. Apple will have no worries from MusicStation and all indications are that the iPhone will be a runaway success unlike anything the mobile industry has seen since the blackberry. The only potential stumbling block might be if the service end of it (i.e. AT&T’s bit) fails to deliver. I would imagine that Apple would have made sure that their partner could deliver but who knows, I’m a Cingular/AT&T subscriber and I think they pretty much blow. Fewest dropped calls? — my foot — I get dropped all the time all over the NYC metro area. Daniel, I hate to say it but, uh, I hope this isn’t your day job, cuz you certainly are way off the mark on this one.
How is this better than Napster?
Napster costs $14.99 per month and functions on 3 desktops and 3 portables (dedicated players or cell phones) — it’s a no-brainer for families with kids.
Napster offers access to 4mm songs.
ATT is offering Napster free for one year.
Motorola is offering Napster free for three months.