According to the Wall Street Journal via Dow Jones, Cingular is going to try to break into the iTunes-dominated digital music market by parnering with multiple iTunes competitors, including Napster, Yahoo, and eMusic, to launch one or more online music stores on its cell network. The announcement could come as early as tomorrow. The company already sells a relatively small catalog of songs through its mmode service, but this would be a much larger initiative, thanks to the extended catalogs and market experience of Cingular's soon-to-be-announced partners.
Out of the gate, Cingular's would let you transfer songs over a USB cable from your computer onto your music-capable cellphone, but OTA (Over the Air) downloads are on the way. A side benefit of the feature would be a Shazam-like tool for identifying songs acoustically, so that you can then tag the song for later purchase or subscription download.
Format support is admirable: MP3, WMA (open, PlaysforSure download,
and PlaysforSure subscription). This means that not only will you beable to transfer individually-purchased or subscription songs fromeMusic, Napster, and Yahoo (possibly from a unified Cingular interface)
onto your Cingular phone, but will also be able to rip your CDs to MP3
or WMA, and transfer those as well. That means these phones will makesense for people who just want to stick with CDs, as well as those whowant to buy online or OTA.
Cingular has much more open thanVerizon when it comes to allowing MP3 ringtones and other files to betransferred on and off of its phones. If it carries this attitude intoits online music service, Sprint and Verizon could soon be facing somestiff competition – maybe iTunes too, although the much-rumored iPhonecould change that in a heartbeat.
