O death, where is thy vespiary?
|
|
|
Mobile music service disappoints
Product: Musicstation
Supplier: Omnifone
Web: www.omnifone.com
Price: £1.99 per week or included free with some Vodafone tariffs
ON PAPER Musicstation looks like it should be the best digital music download service there is for mobile phone users. Sadly, the INQ just couldn't get on with it.
One reason why Musicstation is better than Nokia's Comes with Music, for example, is you don't have to buy one of just two Nokia handsets which currently support it. To be fair, the INQ doesn't much like the Nokia 5310 Comes with Music phone, either.
Omnifone - the company behind the service - says Musicstation currently runs on about 40 handsets in the UK from the likes of Sony Ericsson, LG and Samsung as well as Nokia.
The drawback is that to benefit from the £1.99 per week tariff - with no data charges - you have to be on Vodafone as a Brit.
The good news is that the software to enable you to run Musicstation on the handset of your own choice is available free of charge on Vodafone Live. The catch is that the software only works on Vodafone branded handsets - not SIM-free models.
The one thing which is most in Musicstation's favour is that you don't need to own a PC in order to be able to download your favourite tracks to your phone. That means when you remember a track you've always liked, you could be listening to it within minutes.
Everybody claims their download service offers the best range of music tracks. Omnifone says that it offers over 2.5 million tracks from all the four major music labels as well as many leading independent labels.
It certainly seems to suit Old Foggies since the INQ managed to locate three tracks from the 70s Brit rock band, Family, on Musicstation.
The other advantage to Musicstation is that it automatically detects which make and model of music handset you posses and picks the best file format - which Omnifone says is eAAC+.
eAAC+ is smaller in size than MP3, so in theory you can download a full music track in seconds if your phone supports HSDPA. It's still around 30 seconds using a standard 3G connexion and only about two minutes over GPRS.
And here's the rub. The INQ deliberately borrowed a handset from Omnifone itself to ensure a fair review. Sadly the company supplied a Sony Ericsson W880i handset which doesn't support HSDPA, so we couldn't test the lightning download speeds.
We tried loading it onto a N95 8GB which Nokia provided but the software wouldn't load as it was a SIM-free - not Vodafone supplied - handset.
The real problem is the application's user-friendliness. Get this, you highlight 'volume' in the help menu and it tells you to use the handset's own volume control. Integration? We've heard of it, eh?
The worse part was trying to find the tracks which had been previously downloaded. They had a nasty habit of disappearing.
And that's despite the fact that Omnifone claims that downloaded Musicstation tracks and user playlists are stored centrally so that if a handed is stolen, lost or upgraded, the replacement phone will automatically restore the customer's music, playlists, friends and preferences the first time Musicstation is switched on.
Which takes us nicely to the biggest drawback with Musicstation - the fact that tracks are only rented. If you cancel your subscription the tracks disappear.
Plus tracks are locked down with DRM. That means you can't copy them to a PC at present. Omnifone has a solution that would enable this to happen called the 'Desktop Edition'.
At the time of writing, Vodafone UK wasn't offering such a service. Which is a shame.
One redeeming feature of Musicstation is 'Buzz'. This is a facility that enables subscribers to swap their favourite tracks around. Considering you can download as many tracks as you like, this is a great advantage.
Vodafone is hoping, of course, that Buzz will help turn Musicstation into some kind of mobile music social network. Given that research for Vodafone says that two thirds of existing subscribers would recommend it to their friends this might just happen.
But, overall, the Musicstation experience was more than a little disappointing. µ
The Good
Good choice of 2.5 million tracks and unlimited downloads
The Bad
Tracks are only rented and disappear if subscription ceases
The Ugly
The user interface was a nightmare
Bartender's verdict
Share this:
Share
The issue with DRM is a little over the top sometimes. There are broadly two types of consumers of entertainment. They are, "The Hoarders", who like to outright own their music and "The Tossers", those who want to sample and try out as much as possible and only own their favourites.
The Hoarders = A La Carte Services & No DRM. This should be understood to all
The Tossers = Tethered, subscription services where DRM is not an issue, really. The value for these consumers is in sampling the music and then tossing it.
I own the stuff I "buy". If it's a rental only offer then that's not beneficial to the consumer since they are effectively enslaved. If they leave the service then they lose all their songs.
There needs to be some consumer-business balance. We also need some consumer data protection laws. Consumers should not end up in a situation where their valuable data is witheld from them.
TheInquirer - when t f are you going to fix the comment paragraph bug?
I don't know why they keep bothering. Wasn't it Einstein who said the definition of insanity was repeatedly trying the same thing while hoping for a different outcome?