MusicStation has stolen a march on Apple, in the fight for the ultimate music handset. They've announced that they have launched a 'All you can eat' music download service that is available in Sweden from today, and will be rolled out across the rest of Europe and Asia in the next few weeks (it won't be coming to US any time soon, from what we hear).
They've got deals with Universal, Sony BMG, EMI, Warner and some of the larger independent labels, such as the Beggars Group. That's a lot of music. It works on almost all 2.5 and 3G phone, and is available for 2.99 Euros a week (no word on UK pricing yet). That money involves the data charges as well.
Your downloaded tracks and playlists will be stored on a central server, so nothing is lost if you lose your phone. There will be your favourites list stored on the internal phone memory, so that you can listen if you're out of signal, or if your phone is in Flight Safe mode.
There will also be some community features, such as the ability to find out which tracks are being played the most (versus purchased or downloaded), access to others playlists and the ability to share your own, message other users with recommendations, and receive news about the artists you download most frequently.
Try as I might, I can't see a reason why this won't be hugely successful - it seems to have everything, including that crucial 'all you can eat' element. Yes, there's no swanky iPhone, but for those people who already have an allegiance with Nokia, Sony Ericsson etc, it's ideal.
Clearly MusicStation agree, since they've predicted they will shift 100 million MusicStation enabled handsets, versus a paltry 10 million iPhone prediction from Apple. Pah!
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