Muve Music, the unlimited music plan offered by prepaid cellphone company Cricket, has doubled the number of subscribers it has to 200,000 in the past two months.
...... would begin offering the service along with unlimited voice, data and texting for $65 a month on Android-powered smartphones by the end of September. Up until now, the service has only been offered on a traditional cellphone with stripped-down capabilities for $55 a month, a deal that also offered unlimited voice, data and texting.
Cricket's music service has grown rapidly since launching in January, partly because it bundles the music service with customers' regular cellphone bills and eliminates incremental charges for downloading new songs. Users on average download more than 400 songs per month and listen to music two to three hours per day.
The mobile carrier market is very competitive (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-mobile are the big 4 in the USA). With Muve Music proven to be a huge success, I bet the big carriers are working on their very own Muve Music right now.
I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years, unlimited music downloads will be a common part of a smartphone plan.
found a youtube video that describe Muve Music ( with the TV commercial start at 0m49secs)
I like the part where the dude said:
i always see my friends downloading music, and i was like "what? isn't there a limit"
If this take off like the music industry wants it to, these are in trouble:
-Itunes/Amazon mp3, emusic etc...
-physical CD sellers
-Internet Radio (pandora, iheartradio, turntable.fm, lastfm etc...)
-On demand music subscription (spotify, Rhapsody, deezer, napster, rdio, mog etc...)
There are about 250 million cellphone users in the USA. Assume the music industry charge $3 per user.
250 mil x $3 x 12 months a year = $9 billion a year in TRADE VALUE.
The current TRADE VALUE of USA recorded music is $4.167 billion.
Assume 70%-30% split where the music industry keep 70% and the phone carrier keep 30%.....
Phone carrier charge each user $4.29 for unlimited music download.
70% = $3 to the music industry
30% = $1.29 to the like of Verizon, ATT, Sprint, T-Mobile, Tracfone, Cricket etc...
Who wouldn't want to pay $4.29 for unlimited music download?
Overnight, illegal music download will almost disappear.
Who will benefit:
-Music Industry ($4 billion trade value to $9 billion trade value)
-Phone Carrier (they get 30% cut of each subscription)
-cell phone users
Right now, a lot of teenagers are paying $20-25 for unlimited TEXT. They would LOVE to pay $4.29 for unlimited MUSIC DOWNLOADS. In order for this to work, SCALE is needed. What kind of scale? Say 150-200 million subscribers.
Cricket has about 5.7 million users in the USA. TINY compare to the like of Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile who between them has something like 180 million customers in the USA.
It's one where the music industry has been trying for years to little success.
The phone carriers don't want it.
But time are changing since Muve Music is such a success.
200,000 subscribers out of a 5.7 million customers base = 3.5% .
And Muve Music is growing at a very fast rate. Most importantly, it reduces churn (people switching to a different phone carrier) because once you use Muve Music and create playlist, you don't want to lose your songs. This give them a competitive advantage over rivals. Which mean their rivals will duplicate this in no time.
And for the music industry, it's a pretty sweet deal. For starters, labels get what they've always wanted: a cut of a mobile operator's monthly data service plan, not just a cut of the music service.The exact split isn't known, but this is the first time an operator has combined a music service so tightly with a monthly data plan.
"This is going to be the most innovative service launch we've seen in the wireless space," Warner Music Group executive VP of digital strategy and business development Michael Nash says. "It's a homerun in terms of bring together the experience you want."
For Cricket, the goal is the same as any other service provider-reduce churn. The company is betting that its pay-per-month subscribers will be less willing to stop paying for a month or so at a time if it means also losing access to their music. If the stats bear this out in the year ahead, it could serve as a convincing selling point to larger operators -- either mobile carriers or Internet service providers -- for labels still negotiating similar deals that tie music access to data plans.
Muve Music from 100,000 to 200,000 subscribers in just 2 months is PROOF that this is working.
Seattle-based Rhapsody's announcing a big partnership today with MetroPCS, which is going to bundle Rhapsody's streaming music service with its $60 per month unlimited wireless plans.
MetroPCS subscribers will also be able to use Rhapsody's "all you can eat" music service on their PCs and other devices besides their phones. By itself, the service costs $10 per month for unlimited, ad-free access to Rhapsody's catalog of 12 million songs, or $15 per month for a version that lets you download songs to multiple mobile devices.
Dallas-based MetroPCS has 9.1 million subscribers to its flat-rate, pre-paid wireless service and network coverage reaching more than 280 million people. It's the fifth-largest carrier in the country.
$60 a month for unlimited music downloads, unlimited text, talk and web.
I don't like this idea, it really depends on the month and which artists release stuff when I download music, so in January for example I will pay a bill for something I didn't used and in the fall I use it all the time.
Also I never heard a phone before who had actually good sound quality besides the IPhone.
Also it will take a lot of time before this will also end up in the rest of the world (like in my country, in a form like this), there are just some countries who can use ITunes, those people will have to wait another long time.
And I am sure it will not stop illegal downloading, hackers will always try to hack to get demo's, unreleased stuff and to get music before it comes out.
And I am sure it will not stop illegal downloading, hackers will always try to hack to get demo's, unreleased stuff and to get music before it comes out.
Piracy will always exist. Nothing beat free.
But if 250 million people are given unlimited music downloads to listen to, piracy will decrease by A LOT.
In Sweden, piracy dropped 25% because of Spotify.
Found another ad on youtube. If the music industry is lucky, the bigger cellphone carriers will join the bandwagon. If you're paying $60 a month for your unlimited talk, text, data, another $5 "bundled" into your cellphone bill will not be much of a difference. But you will get unlimited music to download.
Death at Cricket. No ma'am. Nawt with that horrible ass service.
Cricket is not very good true. But they still have around 5 million prepaid users. #1 is Tracfone with around 17 million.
The scary thing is that since Cricket is successful with MUVE, how much more successful it would be if the big 4 wireless carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile) all agree to pay the music industry $3 per users in order to get unlimited music downloads. They can charge the users $4.5 a month. (much much less than Spotify/Rhapsody at $10 a month).
It's all about SCALE for a subscription service (Netflix, Sirius-XM, HBO, HULU plus)
Having 250 million subscribers will mean a lot of SCALE.
Charge user $4.5 a month for unlimited downloads
Pay the music industry $3 a month per subscriber.
Keep $1.5 for being a "music retailer."
Through its Muve music service, Cricket has seen its business grow by 100,000 new customers in a few months. That growth is marginal for giants like AT&T and Verizon Wireless, who each have more than 90 million users. But for Cricket, with just 5.7 million customers in 35 urban markets, the growth is significant and is making the company rethink its role in the wireless industry.
“We have a unique customer base who says their phone is their central point to the Internet and to whom music is also hugely important,” said Jeff Toig, general manager of Muve. “What has been surprising is just how important music has been to them - that so many are coming because of the music service.”
The service is $5 to $10 more a month on a regular package of voice, texting and data. The final bill for Cricket’s smartphone users can be as much as $65 a month.
We talked earlier this week to Toig about the music strategy, which Cricket eventually hopes to take outside the United States. But competition is heating — the biggest providers are partnering up with music platforms and offering similar packages.
Let's hope so.
Imagine if Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile partnering with Spotify/Rhapsody and offer unlimited music downloads to their "contract customers" (extra $4.5 a month added to their monthly bill).
Overnight, there would something like 200 million paying subscribers paying $4.5 a month extra on their phone bill for unlimited music downloads. 200 mil x $3 (net proceeds) x 12 months = $7.2 billion check to the music industry each year.
In summer of 2010 Deezer signed a crucial partnership with France's biggest mobile operator, France Telecom's Orange, in which Deezer's ad-free premium service, which usually costs about 10 euros a month, was bundled into some smartphone and broadband offers.
The deal helped Deezer rack up some 1.4 million paying clients -- up from just 25,000 -- and was seen by the mobile operator as a way to improve customer loyalty. Under the terms of the deal, France Telecom took an 11 percent stake in Deezer.
"We hope to replicate the Orange model with other telecom operators," said Dauchez, declining to say which operators it was in talks with.
1.4 million out of a population of 60 million. Equivalent of 7 million "bundled" customers in the USA.
New customers buying Virgin's 30Mbps or faster broadband package in the UK will receive six months of free access to Spotify's premium service.
Existing subscribers will get the same offer when they renew their contracts.
Experts believe the bundle will help Spotify compete against Apple's iTunes music store, and other streaming services such as Deezer.
Spotify Premium usually costs £9.99 a month. Spotify claimed musicians will also benefit.
"Telecoms companies moving into the music space increases revenue streams to the music industry and provides benefits for fans and artists alike," said Andreas Liffgarden, Spotify's global head of telecom business development.
Virgin Media said it will also waive related data charges for Virgin Mobile customers using the offer.
Customers who take up the deal can listen to an unlimited number of music tracks, including exclusive content, on either their computer or mobile handsets.
Virgin Mobile is a big wireless operator in the UK. Think AT&T or Verizon of the UK.
Here's how it might go down in the USA using Verizon, Spotify, and the music industry as an example.
Verizon signs deal with Spotify (with Universal, Sony, Warner, EMI and indie label permission).
You're on $80 a month Verizon phone contract. You get Spotify Premium free for first 3 months. At the end of this three months, your monthly bill will increase by $4 UNLESS you opt out of this.
After 3 months, Verizon users will either choose:
$80 a month without Spotify
$84 a month with Spotify
When you can afford $80 a month for a phone contract, what's another $4 in exchange for unlimited music downloads.......I expect at least 90-95% will pay $4 more to stay with Verizon + Spotify.
The other 5-10% will think $4 a month is too much for unlimited music downloads and opt out.
Why I see this as the dominant form of music consumption in the future?
1. the emergence and widely usage of smartphones (Android and Iphone)...it will overtake "dumb" phone (feature phone) sometimes this year in users. More people will use a smartphone this year than a feature phone.
2. streaming music is "much easier than piracy". You're paying for convenience.
Let's me explain #2. How much is your time worth? In order to pirate mp3, you have to search for it, download it, transfer it, (sometimes get bad copies etc....). If you do this on average 4 minutes a day, that's 2 hours a month of your time you could put to better use.
Is 2 hours each month wasted really worth $4-5?
Pay $4-5 a month and you can get all the music you want. And it's EASIER than piracy. Not to mention, it's legal and moral.
--Focus on Muve Music. Leap said it now counts 270,000 subscribers to its unlimited Muve Music download service, and will continue to push the service.
