| On The Web |
| Sprint Debuts Mobile Music Store |
| by Matt Wilkins |
| With Steve Jobs holding the price tag on tracks the iTunes Music Store steady, the Record Industry of America (RIAA) is searching for new opportunities to increase their profits. |
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a new music store is available to Sprint cell phone users. While it offers a friendly user interface and freedom to purchase music anywhere, it's hard to believe it justifies a cost of $2.50 per song. With the RIAA fighting an uphill battle against file sharing, they might just be pushing their luck with such a marketing scheme.
The creation of the Sprint Music Store comes at a time after the RIAA's negotiations with Steve Jobs to raise the price on certain songs at the iTunes Music Store (iTMS) have failed. Jobs knows that a price hike at the iTMS would result in more users moving back to peer-to-peer file sharing programs (such as Kazaa), and is resisting pressure to raise prices.
Sprint contends there are music lovers who find the music stores online too complicated to use and are willing to pay their higher (exhuberant?) pricing for something simpler and more convenient. I would argue, however, that convenience can be rated on several criteria, including selection. Currently the Sprint store offers only 250,000 songs while the iTMS has a selection of two million tracks to choose from. Is it really more convenient if it contains one-eight the selection? Further, the service is only available on two of Sprints top model phones (costing over $200 after rebates) and only capable of holding about 30 songs. While it would cost you $75 to create such a library, it will cost you anywhere from $25 to $100 for a new memory card to expand it. Compare that to the iPod Shuffle, which runs $99 for the 512 megabyte model that can hold approximately 100 songs. The edge for convenience? I give it to the iTMS.
While the design and concept are on the right track, Sprint and the RIAA may have gotten too greedy on this first attempt at a true mobile music store. Regardless of how convenient it is to shop music on the go, due to Sprint's extravagant pricing I doubt Apple is going to lose many users to this new service. |
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