Sprint Nextel Unveils Wireless Download Service

By Julio Ojeda-Zapata, Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.

Nov. 1–Music-download services for computer users typically charge $1 per song file. Tunes purchased on Sprint Nextel’s new, straight-to-cell-phone wireless service cost $2.50 apiece.

The wireless carrier must justify this glaring price difference if its just-unveiled Sprint Music Store is to compete with existing ones — especially Apple Computer’s market-dominant iTunes Music Store for Windows and Macintosh.

Here’s how Sprint will make its case: We’re a computer service, too. Sprint offers song downloads in two versions for one price. The first, in a fast-downloading yet nice-sounding format called AAC+, is phone-only (no PC use allowed). The other, higher-quality file, in Microsoft’s Windows Media format, downloads to computer. It’s playable on up to 3 PCs and can be burned to CD.

Wow, talk about convenience. Sprint thinks its handset users will like sampling tunes while on the go, so it provides a simple-to-thumb-browse interface. Users aren’t pressured to buy right away because the store offers song info, album art and 30-second audio previews that play over cell-phone speakers (we tried that and liked it just fine).

Content! Getcher content here! The Sprint store debuts with more 250,000 songs from four top labels: EMI Music, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group. Not too shabby, until users realize the Apple store has more than 2 million from top labels, plus 1,000 indie labels and 11,000 audiobooks.

We out-rock the Rokr. Motorola’s cell phone, a Cingular Wireless handset with a version of Apple’s iTunes software, has been assailed for a 100-song limit. The first two Sprint Music Store-compatible handsets have no such cap, so users can move up to 1 gigabyte of MP3, AAC and ACC+ tunes from their libraries onto phone memory cards.

We do way more than music. The new flip phones, Samsung’s MM-A940 and Sanyo’s MM-9000, are being billed as gotta-have multimedia powerhouses that tap into Sprint’s high-speed EV-DO network (recently deployed in the metro area) for music streaming, video messaging and TV viewing along with broadband-grade Web and e-mail.

Our songs cost only $2.50! Oh, wait, that isn’t a selling point. Looks like Sprint still faces an uphill battle in a competitive music market. It isn’t the first to take aim at iTunes, but no other service has made much headway — even when charging $1 per song, as Apple does. Does wireless service warrant premium pricing? We will soon know.

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