Vodafone India has announced a new music service - Vodafone Music - for its subscribers. Touted as the first telecom operator to introduce all music service, the Vodafone Music offers free streaming of songs, purchase of tracks/albums, and watching song videos. Vodafone Music can be accessed through vodafonemusic.in, WAP site - live.vodafone.in and through an Android app available in Google Play Store. At this moment, the service is available to the Vodafone mobile subscribers.
The new Vodafone Music service platform is developed by Hungama Digital Media and Vodafone has partnered with several music labels for garnering the music library. Vodafone Music allows unlimited music and video streaming without any charge but the users will have to pay for data charges if used over mobile networks.
Vodafone Music is offered in Pay Go and Pack charges options. The Pay Go allows the user to pay as low as Rs 3 for a single song or Rs 10 for five songs. Whereas the Pack charges offer Rs 99 per month, Rs 29 per week and Rs 5 for a day - for unlimited song downloads. As of now, we are not sure about the bit rate and quality of songs downloaded through the Vodafone Music service.
Vodafone Music app for Android devices is developed by Hungama Digital Media and is now available in the Google Play Store. The app offers basic functionality of accessing music collection from the Vodafone Music service. Designed smartly, the Vodafone Music app has the menu that offers quick access to Categories such as Bollywood, International, Religion, Deity & Saints and Regional. Also in the same panel is the user's account related menu options such as subscription, songs, playlists, albums and buddy list. Vodafone Music app allows free streaming of music that can be added to playlist, liked and even downloaded at Rs 3 per song if not subscribed to the monthly Pack. As of now, the Vodafone Music app is available only for Android platform.
When asked about the release of the app for other platforms, Vivek Mathur, chief commercial officer, Vodafone India, told The Mobile Indian, "Vodafone Music app was ready for Android platform, which comprises of about 70 percent of smartphone users and thus we decided to release it for them. The iOS version is expected to release very quickly." No specific time frame for Vodafone Music app for iOS was shared.
The Pay Go values and Pack Charges will remain the same for all Vodafone subscribers - irrespective of the mobile platform they use. That means that the user having a basic phone with WAP support can enjoy same music that an iPhone user can, over Vodafone network.
When asked about the future plans with Vodafone Music service on the app features front, Mathur stated, "We have access to really large base of customers and resources to sustain this platform with upgrades required in the future. We have a feature to detect the download speeds of the user device and accordingly adjust the quality of content for the best possible experience."
In near future, Vodafone aims to offer some advance level features such as cloud storage for music powered by Vodafone themselves.
As of now, the music on mobile platform is very competitive with Vodafone stepping into arena. Some of the big music centric services include ones from Hungama, Gaana, Nokia MixRadio, Saavn, Dhingana and couple of others. The key difference to be noted here is that the Vodafone Music is available only to Vodafone customers so that limits access of mobile subscribers of other networks to it.
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