November 10, 2005
At Last, Phone Some Tunes to Yourself
The New York Times gives Sprint's new music store a rave review.
"Sprint's phone-based online music store allows anytime, anywhere wireless downloading of songs for listening - no computer necessary.
This remarkable service is brought to you by Sprint. It's the first cellular carrier to unveil a phone-based online music store; the others have similar plans.
Navigation is quick and satisfying. With a couple of simple button presses, you can search by song title or band name, using the number keys to enter text. You can also browse categories like New This Week and What's Hot, or by musical genre.
The marquee bands from the four big record companies are here, but you won't find many classical performers or independent labels. Sprint says the catalog will improve.
... Songs you download directly to the phone stay on the phone (or another Sprint phone, if you upgrade later). But the price also includes a second copy of each song, which you can download directly to a Windows XP computer.
The catalog offers 250,000 songs, about an eighth of what's on the iTunes Music Store." ...
The WSJ has a prematurely negative (I think) article today entitled So Far, Music-Playing Cellphones Draw Few Fans in U.S. claiming music phones are slow to take off so far.
"Sprint Nextel declines to provide early sales figures for its music service, the first to allow consumers to download full songs to their cellphones over the air, but Internet message boards and forums have shown little enthusiasm since the service launched 10 days ago."
I believe it will do well, downloading on the move is just so convenient. Time will tell.
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