Downloading Music To Your Phone
from the so-much-music-to-download dept
Well, now that you can download a selection of "legal" music to your computer, and as some are promoting the idea of wireless internet audio - where you could simply access any song at any time on any device, it looks like some are starting to experiment with wireless downloading of music. Over in the UK, MMO2 is getting ready to offer downloadable music to your mobile phone - which (along with its strict copy protection) will let you transfer the music to one computer (and one computer only). The article quotes someone saying that tests of the service have shown it to be very popular so far. Of course, I'm not sure how people listen to the music. You could use headphones, or a Bluetooth connection to speakers, or even use the crappy speakers found on certain mobile phones - but not all of those are ideal. The other problem is storage. Most phones don't have that much storage included, and someone could probably fill up their phones pretty quickly. Do you have to start deleting songs you've already paid for once you run out of storage - or can you download them again for free each time you want them? Either way, I'm still waiting to see how long it takes for someone to create a Napster style service for mobile phones - that will also offer ringtones. The carriers will keep trying to keep their system closed, but eventually consumer demand for an open system should win out.
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You transfer the songs from the phone to a computer. However the song can only be played on that one computer, using proprietary software running on the computer. You can copy the song to a CD but it will still only play on that one computer.
Presumably the computer has an Internet connection of it's own, but I don't mind downloading the song through my phone first. Makes sense.
I can also play the song on a special proprietary device attached to the phone. The song will only play on that one single device and can't be transferred to other such devices.
I suppose if the device or the computer ever go bad I wouldn't mind buying all of the music again to load it onto the replacement hardware.
Who thought of this idea? Will they even get one customer? There are so many better alternatives, how can this possibly be popular as stated in the article??
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