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[March 08, 2006]

Gadget Adviser: Is music on your phone music to your ears?

(Chicago Tribune (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) What if you could download music while you were at the grocery store, walking to work or standing on the subway platform? That's the idea behind Sprint and Verizon Wireless' music services, which let you download songs to your phone about as fast as you could using a computer connected to the Internet. You'll need a special phone, but both services cut out the computer connection needed with an iPod.

Sprint's Power Vision music store charges $2.50 a song, and Verizon Wireless' V Cast Music charges $1.99 a song (99 cents a song when you buy it from your computer, which Sprint doesn't allow).

I like the idea of downloading music to a phone, especially since Verizon's service lets you copy your V Cast songs to your compatible portable music player, just like iTunes Music Store sends songs to an iPod.

But to use Sprint's or Verizon's services, you also have to buy a phone that downloads music ($130 to $180 at sprint.com; $100 to $150 at verizonwireless.com). You also have to get a regular phone contract, plus pay up to $25 a month to watch TV, download music, surf the Web and more on your phone. And then there's the special adapter, which will cost you less than $10 and connects your regular earphones to the tiny openings on these phones. Oh, and it helps if you're proficient at spelling artists' names and song titles using a phone's keypad.

This all might sound like a pricey bit of trouble, but a lot of people are hooked: Sprint announced last month that its subscribers had downloaded more than 1 million songs since its online music store opened last October. By comparison, iTunes Music Store sold 1 million songs in its first week of existence in 2003, but it benefited from a much bigger advertising campaign.

Music phones aren't designed to replace music players such as the iPod; they're just designed to get music on the go, without needing a computer.

Today's phone downloaders are early adopters, people who love to try new tech. But what about the typical person on the street?

In a completely unscientific poll and with a V Cast-ready phone in hand, I asked passers-by on Chicago's Michigan Avenue last week for their thoughts on the music-to-phone concept. After downloading their favorite songs from V Cast and testing the phone, here's what they said:

Katie Austin, 25, of Lincoln Park

Music: Austin downloaded Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.

Reaction: "It's not too hard to use, and I don't know how to download [but] it's not as good as my iPod," said Austin, listening on the Verizon cell phone. "Part of it is the headphones. I'm used to in-ear phones. It's not as loud as I would listen to.

"[Music on phones] is a cool idea, but so many people have iPods. I have an iPod; I wouldn't buy it. I don't want all my songs everywhere."

Dan Richardson, 23, of Logan Square

Austin's co-worker Richardson wasn't interested in V Cast at all: "I just want a phone that doesn't drop my calls.

"It's a cool idea to have a phone with everything, but when they start trying to do too much, they don't do anything great."

Anne Frye and her son Tim, 10, of Bourbonnais, Ill.

Music: Tim likes "Weird" Al Yankovic, so he downloaded "Can't Watch This."

Reaction: Hearing the song through earphones, Tim bobbed his head, smiled and said, "It's good, very good."

But mom wasn't sold.

"I wouldn't do it," said Anne Frye. Replacing her iPod with a V Cast-compatible music player would add "just one more thing to go wrong. My iPod has been great, but things go wrong." Ironically, Frye was in town replacing her nearly year-old, on-the-fritz iPod.

Lee Bonner, 31, of Lincoln Park

Music: Bonner checked out the Fugees.

Reaction: "Good sound, reasonable price," Bonner said.

He figured that buying a new V Cast-compatible music player would be worth it: "I would give up my iPod [to buy a player that works with V Cast]. I haven't used it in six months. I think the iPod is too fragile. It looks too pretty.

"I'm a gadget guy. I love phones. It's a guy thing."

___

(c) 2006, Chicago Tribune.

Visit the Chicago Tribune on the Internet at http://www.chicagotribune.com/

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

_____

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For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

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