Vodafone and Universal partner for new music download service
Vodafone has announced it is joining forces with Universal Music to offer its customers a music download service with tunes frrm Universal's catalogue of 600,000 songs. The agreement, announced today, will see the introduction of a broad range of products and services featuring such market-leading stars as Eminem, U2, Black Eyed Peas, Kaiser Chiefs, 50 Cent, Keane, Rammstein, and Scissor Sisters. The new partnership between Vodafone and UMG's Universal Music Group International (UMGI) division represents the world's most extensive offering of music for mobile, including:
- Realtones and ringback tones
- Full-track audio downloads
- Full-track video downloads
- Video streaming
The service will be part of Vodafone Live! and is intended for 3G only. However, they key part of the service, price, has not been announced yet. If Vodafone price this too high (and remember, they'll be competing with iTunes and P2P networks), then file this under "failure". The only advantage any mobile phone music service has over traditional ways of getting music onto a mobile phone (e.g. download MP3 tunes onto your mobile phone from your PC) is convenience. However, convenience is not worth all that much - price the tunes too high, and the extra convenience simply isn't worth the money.
[Source: Vodafone]
