Vodafone Offers Flat-Rate, All-You-Can-Eat Music Downloads; Omnifone’s First Home Deal
By Robert Andrews - Mon 10 Sep 2007 04:00 AM PST
Vodafone (LON:VOD) is offering all-you-can-eat music downloads for £1.99 per week in a range of handsets from November. The move basically will add to handsets the MusicStation shopfront and library application unveiled by west London-based Omnifone at 3GSM this year. It’s Omnifone’s first deal with a UK carrier and its second overall, having already secured a similar partnership with Telenor in Sweden.
It could be a big deal for mobile-toting UK music fans - Omnifone’s client, which has repertoire from the four major labels and includes playlisting and messaging, is credited with being an easy, lightweight way to buy and play tunes on a phone. Its key selling point is that customers are not charged for data transfer but only get their flat-rate weekly subscription deducted from their bill - which is a good thing since Vodafone has not gone as far as T-Mobile and 3 in lowering its data tariffs.
It will also see Vodafone go head-to-head with Nokia’s own music store, due for an autumn launch. With Vodafone primarily using Nokia’s N95 to market its offering, this handset will now include multiple music retail options. Its Christmas range of phones will be pre-bundled with MusicStation but existing Vodafone customers with older handsets will find a link to download the application on Vodafone Live. In a release, Vodafone said this was an “exclusive agreement”.
Posted in: Companies, Vodafone, Entertainment, Music, Mobile, Social Media
