Music, music, music. It all started out so
simple and now it’s as complicated as trying to program a VCR…uh DVD player…I
mean Blu-ray player. However, in the current era of digital tunes two key
factors often arise; cost and accessibility. Under these principles its easy to
see why the CD is failing because it offers neither the value of per-track
purchases or the on-demand mode of online stores. It still grinds my gears
to see HMV selling an EP fro $16 dollars when it can be purchased for $6 on
iTunes. And you wonder why in-store music sales are declining? So let’s
consider the opposite end of the spectrum. Often times what’s most cost
effective is that which is unlimited. And as for accessibility, you can’t beat a cell phone. Thus, an unlimited
cellular music service, such as the one Sony Ericsson is prepped to launch,
sounds like a match made in heaven. However, there’s a naggy catch with digital
downloads and cell phones. Upon one of my travels I used my Ericsson to post
pictures directly to my blog. The data rates cost me a damn fortune. Luckily, Sony has a
preemptive plan, one that involves getting the service providers on board.
The music service, called PlayNow plus,
will launch first in Sweden and globally the following year. In the test model the Swedish
service provider Telenor will begin offering the W902 Walkman phone with
unlimited downloads for 6 months and 1,000 preloaded songs, all DRM free. At
the end of the 6 months, the users will get to keep the 100 most played tunes
(not really sure what the point of that is, since they’re DRM free and likely
to be quickly copied to any nearby PC, assuming they aren’t entirely
Millencolin tracks). However, that quirk aside, those tunes downloaded over the
service will remain and they won’t cost against your monthly data usage. This
is, understandably, a crucial aspect of the unlimited service, which would be
basically crippled by exorbitant transfer rates. In order to have the data
usage omitted Sony has had to cut a deal with the service provider, unlike
rival Nokia.
However, at launch, the service will cost
roughly $15 a month. Not a bad price for unlimited music on the go, with the
added bonus of the removal of the headache inducing notion of monitoring your
downloads by the kilobyte. But what do you think; is it worth the cost?
Is it good value? I’m not sure, it will depend on the other costs associated with the phone. I don’t want my music on a phone so it isn’t attractive to me, but other members of my family would be more interested.