Comments on: Palm Pre: Where's the music?

As with RIM's BlackBerry Storm, the Palm Pre sounds like a great smartphone, but music's an afterthought. To me, that makes it a poor iPhone competitor.

[dbot77]

Why is it I never see Rhapsody listed as a want for these smartphones when it comes to music?

Maybe subconsciously this is the reason why I couldn?t actually go through with my purchase of the Storm? and why initially I said I wouldn?t get an iPhone until it would serve as the perfect iPod replacement ? just not enough storage for everything I would want on a moment?s notice.

I think, and hear me out, this is why Rhapsody HAS to be a major consideration as either a Sprint/Palm partner? or the next MS Zune/Phone.
1. You don?t need storage
2. No more worries about Syncing
3. Streaming may blow on a 3G, but just buffer it a bit like Xbox does when you buy a movie. Done. Voila.
4. Bill my subscription as a part of my phone bill, or separately ? it won?t matter.
5. Could be a HUGE powerplay against iTunes? WHO WOULD EVER BUY MUSIC AGAIN???
6. Get NetFlix in on this too. Stream to the XBOX and others? Stream to my Palm Pre ****** ? then you don?t need iTunes for movies either! Then folks will start saying ?iTunes who? Apple who??


Get NetFlix and Rhapsody in this sucker and bill me a flat $110 a month and I?ll give you my Blackberry, my iPods (plural, you can have my wife?s too), and my Apple TV. JUST TAKE?EM, I WON?T BE NEEDING THEM.

I?ll keep my 360 though thank you very much.

[AllenKids]

Honey you do realize the majority of consumers don't wanna rent music, do you.

[bringer666]

If downloading music is only from amazon, then it won't be very useful when it comes to Canada. amazon.com won't sell mp3s to me because I hold a Canadian Visa card and amazon.ca doesn't sell mp3s. At least itunes will sell mp3s to most of the world and now it looks like without DRM.

[dimethol]

Is the battery life going to suck just like on the iPhone? I didnt see Palm commenting anything on that. So i guess yeah.

[hamedhemmati]

as far as i can tell since it's a Linux os once Palm opens access to it's core operating system you could theoretically write a mobile version of itunes for it. I don't see any reason why you wouldn't be able to have itunes on this phone at all unless of course apple prevents you from doing so. on the other hand the phone is not finished and from what i understand this phone will no longer support palm desktop any more so it should come with some other form of data synchronization other than the web synchronization because there are people that use their outlook for personal pop accounts which the phone will not be able to sync over the air. in the end you are right music organization is what made ipod and made iphone popular just look how disappointing sonic stage was. if palm build a music application even if simple just for music not tv shows or movies they might become the next ipod of the future.

[phila3884]

Finally, someone gets it with this device.
We don't want a touchscreen-only device. We want a keyboard too..
And we don't want a slide out keyboard that only can be used in the landscape mode. Sometimes we don't want to hold the device sideways with two hands. We want to be able to hold it vertically in one hand and type short text lines while holding a latte or a roll-aboard suitcase in the other. What a concept.When we're on the train, then yes, two-hands, landscape mode etc etc. This device finally does it all.

[AppleSuxLeo]

The Pre is a game changer. Like Roger McNamee said , Pre does everything the iPhone does...and thousands of things the iPhone can`t do.

[Thed_Weller]

i think that being able to play music on your phone is cool, but i think the reason that the iPhone is such a hit has more to do with the apps that have been created for it. most of us "smart phone users" are social network freaks...and we can play music on our iPods...we want our phones to get us on the web and keep us connected. according to what i've seen, with Pre's ability to continue to play music (and any other application while doing it) will keep it in the game even if there isn't a "pTunes" to keep it full of music.

[randygrenier]

There's a very large segment of people who listen to music on phones and other devices who do *not* use iTunes. Many of us do not want to be locked into Apple's proprietary products and DRM baloney. I've been listening to MP3's on Palm phones since before iTunes and iPods existed, and My Palm Pre is great for playing music and listening on my stereo Bluetooth headset. Simply drag files over or download from Amazon. That's my preference.

Palm Pre--the music player for the rest of us! ;-)

[randygrenier]

Oh, and by the way, since applications can easily be written with XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript, there will probably be quite a few music applications for the Palm Pre pretty soon. Even better news is that they will work with MP3's which are transferrable between any application and device.

[cvaria]

"Here's the thing: without iTunes, there's no iPhone. And without the iPhone, there's no consumer smartphone audience. I don't doubt that Palm (and RIM, for that matter) understand mobile communications and information management, and there's certainly a lot of room for improvement in business phones. But if I'm going to replace my MP3 player with a phone, these phones won't cut it."

Seriously! You should not be reviewing smartphones if you are going to make stupid statements like the above.

[mediamonkey]

Hi,

fyi, MediaMonkey 3.2 was recently released and unlike iTunes, it does sync music to the Palm Pre, with support for music, associated album art and playlists. You can check it out directly on download.com.

-Rusty