American mobile services giant AT&T has announced it would offer users wireless song downloads from Napster Inc. The mobile services giant made the announcement Monday, and said users could download songs from the digital music service that Napster Inc. runs.
AT&T and Napster Inc. already have an agreement in place that allows AT&T subscribers to transfer music that Napster provides by connecting their cell phone to the computer using a cable or a storage card.
The new agreement, which would be effective mid-November, would enable AT&T users to directly download songs and music from Napster into their cell phones at the price of $7.49 for a five-song package. Users would also have the option of buying music a la carte by paying $1.99.
Napster is one of the players in the market that offers digital music to users online. Currently, Napster customers can access their music for a subscription fee of $15 per month. For this amount, customers can access unlimited music from Napster. It also offers just computer services to customers at $10 a month.
Other competitors like Apple and Sprint Nextel offer similar services at rates far below what AT&T is proposing. Apple and Sprint Nextel offer users songs at the rate of 99 cents a song. Apple is the leading provider of digital music now, while Sprint Nextel is the third largest mobile services provider in the U.S.
Rob Hyatt, the director of premium content at AT&T, agreed that the pricing was much higher than their competitors. He said the price was likely to prove a deterrent to a number of customers. However, he said it would most certainly be okay for customers in the younger age bracket wanting to buy music spontaneously, as they were usually not too sensitive about cost.
IDC, a technology research firm has said that the year 2007 would see 10 million American users downloading approximately 70 million songs from digital music providers into their cell phones. It has also forecast that by 2011, the number of users downloading music digitally would jump to 44 million.
With the whole world going digital, music download is rapidly becoming one of the popular services that mobile operators are offering customers. Other such services include video as well as Internet surfing.
The idea behind providing these services is to encourage users to use their cell phones as not just devices for making and receiving calls. By doing so, users could avail multiple facilities and the mobile service providers could increase their earnings.
Napster is not the first or only music offering that AT&T is providing clients. AT&T already allows users to download music from eMusic. The rates for those downloads are the same as what is being offered for the Napster downloads.
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