Cingular to Launch Mobile Music Service

Bringing up another example of the convergence of entertainment and communications devices, Cingular, the second-largest cellular carrier in the US, is expected to soon launch a cellphone-based music service, taking little help from several companies including Yahoo, Napster and eMusic.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the company would soon enable users to download music files from their personal computers onto their cellphones.

“We're not offering comment on that [Wall Street Journal] article, nor did we offer comment to that article...we will be making an interesting announcement very shortly,'' said a spokeswoman for Atlanta-based Cingular.

It is anticipated that at some point in 2007, over-the-air download service will be made available to the customers to allow them to purchase music directly from their phones. An interface similar to the one used for purchasing ringtones will be used by the download service and through a ‘Music ID’ users will be able to locate their favorite songs quickly on Napster.

The users will have to simply hold a phone close to a speaker playing a song, match the track against Napster's database and, if the tune's available, one can buy the song by clicking a single link on the phone.

The two companies that have already launched a music service are ‘Sprint’ and ‘Verizon’ but their success is still not palpable. Sprint claimed to have sold 8 million tracks in the year since the launch of its own music store while Verizon did not disclose the sale numbers.

The cell phone/music business is pacing up although it made a lazy start. Mobile-makers are definitely gaining from the popular music-playing phones with Nokia aiming to sell 80 million such phones by year end and Sony Ericsson reporting sales of 15 million Walkman phones over the last 14 months.