A girl's best friend is her mutter" - Dorothy Parker
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HP to launch music service in Europe
HP IS SET to launch an online digital music service in Europe for your aural pleasure next Monday.
According to Reuters, HP is working in tandem with British digital music firm Omnifone and is bundling its Musicstation steaming service on 16 of its PCs. The service will cost Joe and Joanna Punter £8.99 a month or can be trialled for 14 days for free, and users can keep 10 tracks each month.
Omifone's savvy has been to tap in to HP's massive desktop installed base and revamp its remit as a cloud based streaming service for mobile hardware to a wider focus on all connected devices à la Spotify.
"With its huge scale and user base, HP's 10-country introduction ... will help encourage legitimate access to digital music content," Rob Wells, Universal Music's digital music chief, said.
Unlike Spotify, Musicstation subscribers can download an unlimited selection of 6.5 million DRM locked tracks and even 10 unlocked free tunes per month that can be loaded on to other devices ad infinitum.
The Musicstation service garnered praise when it launched a couple of years ago but that was as a service for mobile operators. Its new battleground is already an overcrowded emporium, stuffed to the gills with competitors offering end-to-end digital music services.
Let's see if users take to a DRM encumbered music service and how long Omnifone manages to punch above its weight. µ
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10 free songs per month - No, £9/month is not free. That's still 90p per song, if you actually find 10 songs you like each month.
6.5m songs with drm, well ok. Is the interface good? Can I make playlists etc, will it work using Winamp or Windows Media Player or Iplayers?
Recap - 10 songs at 90p a month, whether you want them or not. 6.5mil songs you can listen to but not keep, like the radio. Sounds like a book club from 30 years ago.
Might work, feels a bit cumbersome but nearly there.
at "DRM locked tracks".
There's DRM ? Couldn't care less then.
But the last person's name is probably pronounced the same way the word for illegal online goods used to be pronounced by me, before I learned it's a play on the word "wares."
Ironic, considering the topic. (or maybe Alanis Morrissette confused me so much, I'm wrong about that?)
Another DRM-encumbered service fails at launch (like Microsoft's "Plays for sure", which "don't play no more").
Providers who make unlimited high quality downloads cheap enough (and UNENCUMBERED by DRM ) will blow everyone else out of the water.
$15/month * most of the population of Europe and N. America = win.
All my complaints about drm are taken care of right there? And if I was wrong about the free, anything $20 or under that has the other two things(no need for a net connection and unlimited) will get my money unless or until something better comes along.
Spotify definitely has me as a customer if they come to the States.