Napster Mobile expands its service
(Credit: Napster)Napster and AT&T announced Thursday that Napster Mobile is now available to more than 13 million AT&T customers.
As part of AT&T Mobile Music, Napster Mobile is now available on more than 25 AT&T phones, including the new BlackBerry Bold, the Pantech Matrix, and the Samsung Propel.
According to Napster, the expansion was possible thanks to less restrictive DRM. If your phone is compatible, you can purchase and download songs over the air from Napster Mobile for $1.99 each, which also includes a PC copy. If you choose, you can also get Napster Mobile for a $7.49 monthly subscription, which allows you to download five songs per month.
(Credit:
Crave UK)
Nokia launched a new music service Tuesday in the U.K. that bundles free access to music with the purchase of a phone.
The new service called "Comes with Music" offers users of certain Nokia phones a year's subscription to the company's music service. The program will initially be offered through Carphone Warehouse in the U.K., but Nokia has plans to eventually roll it out globally.
Nokia first announced the Comes With Music service last year. The service essentially bundles access to digital music with the purchase of a new handset. The first phone to use the service is the 5310 XpressMusic device. With the free one-year subscription to the service, Nokia users can download as many songs as they want and keep the songs even after the subscription expires.
This is a clear differentiator from other music stores and services. Apple's iTunes requires users pay for individual songs or albums. Verizon Wireless and Real have launched the new Rhapsody music store for mobile phones. It also allows subscribers to download and listen to as much music as they like for $15 a month. But once users stop paying the subscription fee, access to the music disappears.
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AT&T today announced two enhancements to its AT&T Mobile Music service that will let users use music to customize their cell phones. With mSpot's Make-Ur-Tones (couldn't they have come up with a better name?), AT&T customers can create their own ringtones using an application downloaded to their cell phone. While that in itself is hardly new, the application gives aspiring musicians a lot more freedom than you might expect. Instead of just offering a selection of Midi tones, users will be able to download an actual music track and then cut their favorite portion for a 30-second ringtone. Of course, there will be a fee involved. Make-Ur-Tones is available will require a monthly subscription of $6.99 for three ringtones, with additional ringtones costing $2.99 each.
Remix, also from mSpot, will let you use your handset and AT&T's network to access music saved on your PC. Not only can you play songs using the Remix player, but also the track download to your handset's memory card. At $9.99 per month Remix is more expensive than Make-UR-Tones, but you'll be able to download 75 songs. If you go past your amount, you can can get a "Remix booster pack" for $2.99, which will give you 10 additional song downloads.
Though the two services each accomplish something pretty nifty, we're not fans of the subscription model. Charging $7 to $10 per month is a bit steep and we don't like how it locks you into a set number of transactions (use it or lose it!). Here's hoping that AT&T also comes up with a purely a la carte mode. Also, the services won't be available on the same selection of AT&T phones, which is rather odd. While Make-Ur-Tones will work on the Samsung Sync SGH-A707, Samsung SGH-737, , and Motorola V3xx, Remix will be available only on the Samsung Sync SGH-A707, Samsung SGH-A737, and LG Shine CU720.
BlackBerry owners may be feeling like they have nothing to brag about now that the iPhone has added connectivity to Exchange e-mail systems--the BlackBerry's bread-and-butter feature.
Soon, BlackBerry users will have an over-the-air music download store designed just for them.
(Credit: Research In Motion)Not to worry. By April, Blackberry owners will have something the iPhone still lacks--the ability to download songs over the air from any location with cellular access. Canadian company Puretracks, which has licensed more than two million songs from all four major labels and plenty of indies, announced plans to launch a mobile store for the BlackBerry family of devices in April.
The files will be in the AAC format used by iTunes, which offers higher quality at small file sizes than MP3. But unlike iTunes, none of the songs will be encumbered by DRM, allowing users to transfer them to as many computers as they like. Puretracks also promises to make a Wi-Fi enabled version of the store for BlackBerry devices with built-in Wi-Fi connectivity--a direct competitor to the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store. No word yet on download pricing.
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MediaMaster is a Web based jukebox and music storage service we've covered a few times here on Webware. It launched in mid-March, and has since gone on to roll out a successful Facebook app, and a directory of user-created radio stations, which are playlists people have decided to share. In a nutshell, the service lets you upload your music and manage it in a Flash-based jukebox that's about as easy to use as Apple's iTunes software. Today they're launching their mobile service, which lets anyone with a Palm Treo or a Windows Mobile handset access their playlists or individual songs while on the go.
You don't get full access to your library (which would be nice), but it's incredibly simple to start listening to a playlist. Just login to the mobile version of the site, plug in your login credentials, and see all your playlists on one page. To get going, just click the "Listen" link, and your music starts playing in whatever order you've set for the playlist. I also managed to download individual song files to my phone from each of my playlists when going through Internet Explorer mobile and visiting each playlist's "info" section. Media Master recommends installing Green Software's GSPlayer to stream the music files; otherwise IE simply doesn't know what to do with the URLs. Palm Treo users get a slightly better end of the deal, as Palm's browser recognizes the URLs and will start streaming right away.
This is a good first effort from MediaMaster, although without the GSPlayer on Windows Mobile handsets, it's not nearly as friendly on the eyes as solutions from Orb, or some of the file-sharing services that offer mobile access for media files (e.g. Box.net). I also don't see much merit in accessing music files on your phone unless you're in a pinch, or have a phone with a 3.5mm headphone jack. Considering most handsets running Palm and Windows Mobile likely didn't come with these jacks until recently, owners of older models are stuck listening through the built-in speaker or carrying special 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapter to get their music on without perturbing others.
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