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Streaming Music on Cell Phones

Techstination feature for Monday, June 30, 2003

Streaming music on cell phones. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Sprint PCS has lined up two big recording studios... AOL Time Warner and Sony... to launch what it calls its Vision Music Channel... streaming full length songs... onto cell phone handsets... (sound) Senior consumer products director Jeff Hallock...

"It's radio kind of quality. It's not necessarily CD quality yet, that's coming soon. But it's radio quality music."

The music services will be available inmid July. Snippets from songs can be used a ring tones as well. Sprint PCS and other wireless carriers are looking at a variety of services they hope will lure subscribers into spending more for data. Sprint PCS for instance charges consumers an extra 15 dollars a month for its Vision data services. At the end of the first quarter one in eleven subscribers had been lured to spend the money. Sprint PCS hopes music will clinch the deal with younger cell phone users...

"Well for us really, we are providing access to a whole number of applications within PCS Vision. This area of music and ringers is a key part of that that helps customers decide to do more with their phone than just talk on it. Whether they want to have some fun or personalize their device. And so this, for us, is really one of the applications that helps people see that they should be subscribing to more than just using their phone with voice."

The increasing numbers of phones with built in digital cameras have the same goal. In the first few months of this year... the average cell phone bill at Sprint PCS declined by a few dollars. The company hopes music will make its outlook... more upbeat.