Carphone Warehouse Introduces Music Anywhere to rival Spotify and iTunes
Carphone Warehouse, the mobile phone provider, has launched Music Anywhere, a music service that may be a big rival for Spotify and iTunes in terms of streaming music to internet-enabled mobile devices. The service is only £29.99 a year, offering a catalog of over 6 million songs from all the major artists. This is much cheaper than the £10 a month (£120 a year) service offered from Spotify.
The offering allows users to listen to their favorite music without having to take their whole collection with them. Plus, if a track can’t be found in the Music Anywhere archive, a digital copy is made and added automatically to the user’s account online.
This service has been widely welcomed by music industry executives, as it provides music listeners with more choices in downloading and listening to music legally online. The industry has really been struggling with the illegal download of music through file sharing programs.
Universal Music senior vice president Rob Wells says that it’s in everybody’s interest that digital consumers are offered the widest possible choice of fully-licensed and innovated music services. Music Anywhere is the most recent example, he added, and they welcome this progressive outlook. Geoff Taylor, the BPI boss, which represents the record industry, added that the offering is key to continuing the growth of the digital sector.
Carphone Warehouse head of digital services Tom Guy said that Music Anywhere lets users listen to their favorite songs via any computer or the mobile app, no matter where they are. It only takes a few minutes to set up, he added, but this means that users can have thousands of songs available from work, home, in the car or while riding the train.