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Sep 15 2008 4:07pm EDT
Mobile Music War: You Can See It Coming
Kevin Maney writes: Hm. There certainly is a lot of interesting stuff floating around in the realm of music for mobile devices. Best Buy's deal today to buy Napster is a bit of a head-scratcher -- like, what would a big box retailer want with what has become a minor-league music service? There's some speculation that Best Buy has its eye on Napster's mobile music store. Maybe Best Buy could offer customers a free subscription to Napster with the purchase of a cell phone.
Another rumor dotting the Web is that Sony Ericsson might launch a mobile-phone music store with some kind of unlimited download plan. If so, it would be a direct response to Nokia's Comes With Music offering, which launches in October and will first be available only in the U.K. Buyers of Nokia's iPhone-like Comes With Music handset will get a year's free subscription to Nokia's music service -- which means unlimited song downloads that never expire.
All of this adds up to yet more corporate guns aimed at Apple's dominance of the digital music business. While Apple sticks with 99-cent song downloads, other companies are coming at it with various versions of unlimited and/or free music and music services specifically aimed at phones. This is getting more interesting every day.
