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More Music Partnerships at Cingular

Techstination feature for Friday, November 10, 2006

More music partnerships at Cingular. Bloomberg Boot Camp, a report on today's technology. Cingular Wireless, which has been the one carrier selling Motorola's iTunes capable phones, has a new series of partnerships. A new 50 dollar handset made by Samsung….will be able to use subscription services from Napster, Yahoo Music, XM Satellite Radio and eMusic. Cingular's vice president of consumer data services Jim Ryan…

"The big thing for Cingular is, we're about choice. We have a lot of customers out there and those customers have very different tastes. So we just want to make sure that Cingular customers get their music, their way. And there's a lot of people who enjoy services from Yahoo and Napster and eMusic and other Windows DRM storefronts like Rhapsody and AOL and Urge and all those will be available to move to your phone and enjoy. There's also a lot of customers who enjoy iTunes. We're really trying to cover all the bases." Will it have any impact on your relationship with Apple? "If anything it's just a continuation and evolution of our overall strategy. So I think the partnership with Apple is a very strong partnership and that will be one that continues to grow."

While a data plan from Cingular isn't required…it's advisable for customers who want to stream music from the services. Songs can also be played straight from memory cards, Rather than create partnerships, rivals Verizon Wireless and Sprint have created their own music downloading services. A couple of months ago, Verizon opted to drop its 15 dollar monthly music service fee…deciding to charge on a per song basis instead. Bloomberg Boot Camp, I'm Fred Fishkin.