Omnifone’s MusicStation could rival iTunes - anyone tried it yet?
Has anyone tried out Omnifone’s MusicStation, recently launched on Vodafone UK? I’ve been seeing the advertisements here in the UK for the service and I’ve been meaning to pluck up the courage to walk into a Vodafone store and open an account again, just to try out MusicStation.
I reckon Omnifone is the last bastion of hope for many of the mobile manufacturers who couldn’t get music to work on their mobile phones properly on pain of death.
With woefully few exceptions, the implementation of music on any handset that ISN’T an iPhone is woefully inadequate. In fact, there’s no need to mince words: It’s nothing short of pure shit, actually.
It’s both carriers and handset manufacturers that haven’t been getting it, at all, for the last five years.
Anyway, help appears to be at hand. MusicPhone looks pretty hot. It could solve a heck of a lot of problems for manufacturers and operators because it looks to be a strong rival to iTunes. Finally a point-click-and-download service that works on a standard mobile handset.
I’ve clicked around the Omnifone site and played with the demos. I’ve read the Vodafone publicity materials. I am, to an extent, pre-sold on the concept. I’m not entirely happy with the £2/week charges but that presumably covers data downloads so, well, a tenner a month is ok since there are no per-track costs. I’m locked into Vodafone, yes, but theoretically speaking, I’ll be able to transfer my Omnifone account to T-Mobile or Orange in the future.
Finally mobile music might work nicely on a Nokia. Or a Samsung. (That is, I don’t want to be faffing around with memory sticks and manually copying music.)
I’ll see if I can get one to test or maybe I’ll go and buy one from Vodafone. The Nokia N95 8GB is calling my name.
Have a look at the handset range Vodafone is promoting for MusicStation:
Sony’s W910i, the N95 8GB and the Samsung F700. Nice. All start at £45/month. You can even get the service on a Blackberry. Interesting news, no doubt, for the army of Vodafone Blackberry users out there.
Just in case you were hunting for some fast facts on Vodafone/MusicStation:
- “Girls Aloud” launch the revolutionary MusicStation service, making the first ever unlimited mobile music download in the UK
- The MusicStation service, available exclusively on Vodafone, goes live today, with handsets available in-store at Phones 4U’s 428 retail outlets and Vodafone’s 345 retail outlets nationwide
- UK consumers get the freedom to download, share and play unlimited amounts of music, wherever they are, direct to a very wide range of Vodafone handsets, for a fixed weekly fee of £1.99 per week
- Revolutionary Monthly Price Plans revealed which offer Vodafone consumers unlimited music downloads along with free text and talk deals*
- Access to over 1.2 million tracks from Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, EMI Music, Warner Music Group and independent labels
- MusicStation immediately available on 13 Vodafone UK handsets with many more to follow, including BlackBerry® smartphones
- MusicStation Touch Screen Edition offers unlimited music downloads on touch-screen phones for the first time globally
- Vodafone consumers with wide range of compatible handsets can download MusicStation to their existing phones free of charge
- Vodafone UK consumers offered a completely free week’s trial on MusicStation
- Omnifone welcomes today’s historic OCC Plays Charts announcement
- Simultaneous announcement that Vodacom (23.6 million subscribers) will launch MusicStation in South Africa
The chap from Vodafone with the QR code badge that you pounced on last night was showing off MusicStation…
Posted by Simon on December 4th, 2007 at 10:13 am.Expect my write up tomorrow…
Posted by James Whatley on December 4th, 2007 at 11:12 am.I’m that chap with the QR code. I do work for Vodafone, but these are my own opions….
Where MusicStation is good, it’s very good. Where it’s bad, it’s merely a bit irritating.
The fact that you can easily search for new tracks, artists and albums on your music player is great.
Downloading over 3G or HSDPA is just about fast enough to listen to track 1 while track 2 is downloading.
The community features are great - seeing the latest music news and downloading the artist’s music at the same time is a great idea. You can share your playlists with your friends and the wider community.
Music qualty is fine, sounds as good as the iPod - your phone and headphones not withstanding
The bad…
The usability isn’t as good as the iPod. It works well, but it’s not quite as fluid.
No gapless playback… Grrr…
You can only play tracks you’ve downloaded from MusicStation. While their catalogue is very extensive, it doesn’t have The Beatles - nor will it let you download profane songs (I think).
Being a software app, it has occaisional bugs and doesn’t always integrate well with the phone’s native features (volume control is done in the app, not the N95’s hard keys, for example).
DRM. I’m against DRM. It’s evil. BUT, this is a rental model. For the price of 1 album (£8) you get to listen to every album in the world for a month. Without the DRM, you could download every album and quit paying at the end of the month.
Overall, I set it downloading a couple of albums and listen to them when commuting. I’m broadly happy with it as a consumer.
These are my own opions, not Vodafone’s. I’m typing this on my Blackberry, so please excuse any typos.
Posted by Terence Eden on December 4th, 2007 at 11:40 am.