Tuesday, June 07, 2005

MusicNet Announces Partnership With MusicGremlin

MusicNet Announces Partnership With MusicGremlin: "With MusicGremlin-enabled devices, customers can discover, manage and purchase digital music directly from their players-wirelessly and without a personal computer. MusicGremlin's device-based music store will allow customers to get music either through a monthly subscription service, allowing them to receive unlimited downloads, or by purchasing 'a la carte' downloads for permanent ownership. As part of the experience, device owners will be able to communicate with and even legally share music wirelessly with other users, creating a mobile community of music enthusiasts."

I applaude the concept, but if you believe that ultimately the mobile phone eats the dedicated portable audio player (which I do) and that most of these phones will have some notion of high(er) level operating system (which they will), then this may end up being a short-lived market for a company like MusicGremlin. Today, with Wi-Fi enabled smartphones/Pocket PCs, users can go to dedicated web-based music stores (like MusicNow) and stream their entire content directly to their device. Direct over-the-air downloads to these devices aren't far behind and the open development nature of these OSes (Windows Mobile/Symbian) makes integration of these applications much easier (and upgradeable) then embedded firmware.

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