While equipment vendors look to content frameworks and DRM influence, some of the response to Apple’s music success is also coming from operators – those that are not won over by the iPhone/iTunes model or the level of control that Apple insists upon, or which may miss out on an iPhone deal. There is, in a general, a growing trend for operators to join forces to create content services and frameworks, and so seek to keep control and fight off the internet giants moving into their walled gardens. The latest of these seems squarely targeted at Apple, as well as open internet music download services coming to cellphones. A group of 23 cellcos, with a combined subscriber base of 690 million in Europe and Asia, and most major music labels, have joined to support a cellular music service from UK specialist Omnifone.
According to Omnifone it has signed partnerships deals with operators in Australia, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the UK. On the content side, Omnifone says it is working with ‘the world’s major music labels’ as well as independents. The only one to go public so far is Universal Music Group International.
The service, called MusicStation, works by letting users search, download and play music on their cellphones and sync it with their PCs to create playlists, which can then be shared with other MusicStation users. The offering is compatible with 75% of handsets that are already on the market and can be downloaded directly to the mobile phone, even if it doesn’t include a music player. Unlike the iPhone, the music is stored centrally, so if a phone is lost or stolen, there is no need to repurchase the tracks. And also if you cancel the subscription, you lose all your music.
Aware of the importance of building brand quickly in online services, the operators have put aside their usual insistence on their own branding and will all use the MusicStation name and look and feel. They have committed to support its launch heavily, including with television advertising. In Europe, pricing will range between €2 and €3 euros a week for unlimited song downloads to a wide variety of 2.5G and 3G phones – though the chances for success for MusicStation will rest heavily on some of these having a similar consumer wow factor as the iPhone itself. However, the service will be available in Europe before the anticipated November launch of Apple’s iPhone in the region (it will debut in the US in June).