Petteri Pyyny
28 Jun 2004 14:52
One of the world's largest mobile phone operators, German T-Mobile, announced today that it will launch its own legal online music store, aimed to mobile phone users. T-Mobile's service will launch on next week in five countries: the UK, Germany, Czech, Austria and the Netherlands. The nag? Service requires a specific phone that supports T-Mobile's "Ear Phones" technology and the company will start selling such handsets on next week's Monday.
It is not clear which company or companies have created the handsets -- and whether consumers are willing to change their Nokias and Samsungs to a handset that offers a possibility to pay for downloaded music. Also, the service currently only offers a catalog of 500 "mixes" that are limited to 90 or 120 seconds in length. However, T-Mobile promises that over 250,000 tracks will be available in "CD-quality" (I think we've heard that term before, haven't we?) format by Christmas. Also, the tracks will cost either €1.50 or £1.50 (obviously the higher price, £1.50, is only for British consumers..) and they can't be transferred to PCs or "real" digital audio players.
T-Mobile has licensing deals with three out of five major record labels; with Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music.
Source: Reuters