Sprint PCS became the first U.S. carrier to offer streaming audio for mobile users last week, launching a radio-like service that delivers short video clips and six channels of streaming audio to subscribers via their handsets.
Music Choice Today, which is available to the carrier’s wireless data subscribers for an additional $6 a month, includes a line-up of channels offering pop, country, R&B/hip-hop and rock. The service also features daily video offerings, such as artist interviews and performance clips, as well as a music news service.
Music Choice, a Horsham, Pa.-based digital company that provides music channels for cable and satellite TV services, is teaming with Sprint to deliver Music Choice Today. With the announcement, Sprint is the first U.S. carrier to offer streaming audio for mobile users.
“We believe at Sprint that things such as music and video on your handset are really going to drive wireless adoption,” said John Burris, Sprint’s director of wireless data services.
Last year, the carrier became the first to offer MobiTV, a streaming video service, and Sprint has since added its own mobile video offering. Sprint TV, the carrier’s “basic cable” multimedia messaging service package, will include video and audio snippets from the new music service, but won’t feature any streaming audio.
The Kansas-based carrier may have just beaten the competition in entertainment offerings once again: Verizon Wireless is rumored to be planning to roll out its own streaming service in January.
Music Choice Today is available to Sprint Vision customers who pay $15 a month for wireless data offerings. The new service is initially available only on one phone, the Sprint PCS Vision Multimedia Phone MM-7400 from Sanyo. The service will be available soon on other handsets, according to the carrier.
“Broadcast music is a critical piece of the overall mobile-music puzzle, and in our consumer research is one of the most popular multimedia content categories,” said Clint Wheelock, director of wireless research at consultancy In-Stat MDR. “The launch of the Music Choice service is a significant milestone for Sprint as the company continues its track record of leadership in deploying a broad range of wireless multimedia services.”
While the demand for on-the-go music has been strong for decades-from the transistor radio to the Walkman to the iPod-Sprint acknowledges its new service is only a small step toward addressing the growing market. Users can’t capture the streaming audio (due to both technological and licensing issues), and a meager six-channel line-up is bound to leave some music lovers unimpressed.
“We believe the next step in mobile music service will give the consumer not only the ability to bring their own content to the handset (for instance, from a computer), but also to download and play new songs,” said Burris, adding that Sprint is likely to add more music channels in the future. “We think the service will evolve over time.”
One result of that evolution is the coming wave of devices that combine mobile-phone technology with sophisticated digital music storage and playback capabilities. Earlier this year, Motorola and Apple announced they’d work together to build an iTunes-enabled phone that may offer vast memory capabilities, and the result may be unveiled as soon as next month. Consumers in South Korea, Japan and a handful of European markets are downloading music via their handsets and storing it on memory chips, and some smart phones can store a few songs without additional memory.
But even the ideal integrated mobile music device may not be enough to get users to purchase and download music on-the-go, according to a report released last week by Strategy Analytics. The London-based consultancy said while it predicts mobile music services will become a $2 billion industry by 2009, carriers will struggle to get customers to buy music from mobile music-on-demand services-even though users are likely to use their handsets to play tunes bought from other outlets.
“Strategy Analytics concludes that online music stores based solely around cellular downloading capabilities cannot hope to compete with the lower costs, better interfaces, larger catalogs and faster transmission speeds of online sites offering music downloads over fixed broadband connections,” according to the consultancy.
Instead, the report urges operators to work hand in hand with subscription-based services such as iTunes and Napster.
“We do not believe that technophile music lovers who currently purchase music through physical points of sale (such as CDs) or online will migrate to cellular distribution,” said David Kerr, the firm’s vice president of global wireless practice. “Given the slim margins afforded by music downloads, we view the low likelihood of achieving scale as a serious barrier to the longevity of mobile-music on-demand services.”
For the time being, though, Sprint said it’s not trying to give download services a run for their money. Instead, the carrier hopes to attract casual music fans who’ll tune in for a few songs when they have a little time to kill.
“We think this will appeal to the person who will put the phone in their pocket on the subway, put on headphones and listen to a few songs on the way to work,” said Sprint’s Burris. “I don’t think it’s going to compete with somebody who wants to have their 40-Gig iPod with them all the time.” RCR
