Sprint Music Store hits sour note with price
In September, Apple, Cingular and Motorola teamed on ROKR, the first mobile music phone to synchronize with Apple’s popular iTunes jukebox software. But the ROKR met a lukewarm reception. It can hold just 100 songs, compared with thousands on most iPods.
To transfer songs to the ROKR, you have to connect the phone via USB cable to a PC or Mac. It can’t download music “over the air,” straight to your handset. Neither could other music phones sold in the USA.
Until now.
This week, Sprint Nextel introduced the Sprint Music Store, a service that lets you browse, preview, buy and download songs on the fly. The songs can be grabbed by one of two compatible handsets: the $230 (with rebate and two-year service contract) Sanyo MM-9000 and the $250 (also after rebate) Samsung SPH-A940. Each is also a camera-phone that offers you live TV, among other multimedia tricks. But it’s over-the-air downloadable music that catches your attention.
Full-track music downloads to a cellphone, without a computer, had previously been available only overseas. The idea seems pretty irresistible. Putting music on your cellphone, after all, means one less gadget to have to carry around.
In my tests with the Sanyo and Samsung models, the Sprint download operation worked mostly without a hitch. If your cell coverage fails (as mine sometimes did), you can’t tap into the music store. But you can play back already downloaded music.
When folded, the two flip phones are shorter and thicker than the candy-bar-shaped ROKR. They come with memory cards that provide pretty limited song capacity — even less than ROKR has. But you can vastly increase those limits by buying optional cards, which I’d expect most music fans to do.
There’s something undeniably cool about having a three- to five-minute song arrive on your phone, just 30 to 45 seconds after ordering it on the handset. You can sample a 30-second preview before buying it.
Here’s what’s not cool: the price of the transaction. Sprint seems badly out of tune with the rest of the online music market. Each track you buy costs $2.50. That compares with 99 cents on iTunes and even less on some other services.
Sprint’s price excludes the $15 to $25 you’ll have to pay for a monthly data plan (which you’d do anyway to access multimedia services). If you don’t opt for a data plan, a single tune can singe you for $22.50.
Sprint’s reasoning is simple: Consumers will pay a premium for instant access and convenience. Plus, you actually get two high-quality copies of the same song. One is tethered to the phone; the other can be downloaded to your computer.
The PC version is a Windows Media file that you can burn to a CD and play on some portable devices. You have the right to copy the song onto three computers.
Sprint’s price strategy
You might think Sprint’s pricing strategy was influenced by the ring-tone market. Customers already fork over at least $2 to $3 to download a customizable musical ring tone. But ring tones, which are about personalization, may be able to command a higher price.
The songs you download through the music store can’t be used as ring tones. Licensing restrictions forbid it. And even if they didn’t, the first 15 seconds of a downloaded tune might not be the most ideal section of a song for a ring tone.
I doubt the iPod crowd will agree to spend $2.50 for music, no matter how convenient. Even those who don’t own a portable player may find it too steep.
It’s too bad, because I think over-the-air downloads are a terrific idea. And Sprint has done a good job designing the music store in this first incarnation.
When you click on the music icon in either phone’s main menu, you’re taken to the store. The first time you arrive, you must create a four-digit password. The Sprint store (powered by Groove Mobile) has about 250,000 songs, with ever-growing content from four major labels: EMI, Sony BMG, Warner and Universal.
To help you find tracks, the phone’s screen lists a few songs under a Featured Music section (i.e., selections from Black Eyed Peas and Kanye West). You can use the phone’s buttons to scout titles under such categories as Weekly New Releases and What’s Hot.
You can also browse by genre or search for an artist or song. Enter a name by single-, double- and triple-tapping on the phone’s keypad. (Neither handset has a traditional, qwerty keyboard.)
I downloaded music from Eminem, Carole King and Frank Sinatra, among others. The songs you buy are tagged to an individual account. That way, if you change phones in the future, the songs remain with you.
While previewing or playing back music, you can see a thumbnail image of the album cover. I had to squint, though, to make it out on the Samsung screen. The image was slightly more visible on the larger Sanyo display.
The PC version of the song you buy shows up in your account on the Web so you can download it. Alas, you can’t also shop for music through Sprint on the Web.
Boosting song capacity
The Sanyo and Samsung phones come with tiny, small-capacity memory cards. Sanyo’s is a 16-megabyte MiniSD card, Samsung’s a 32-MB TransFlash card. One song takes roughly 1 megabyte. So you’re looking at storage limits of about 16 and 32 songs, respectively — not much.
But you can buy optional cards to boost those limits to 1 gigabyte, or about 1,000 songs. With adequate storage, you can also move music on your computer to the phone. Depending on the phone, that involves either connecting a USB cable or inserting a memory card into a reader connected to your PC. The phone accepts files in the MP3 or AAC format; you must have the digital license to transfer a song. When a call comes in, the handset mutes the music.
Now, if only Sprint would provide more harmonious pricing, I’d be singing a happier tune.