Thumbplay News

Thumbplay Music Now The Most Widely-Available Service in the U.S. with Apps on iPhone, Android and BlackBerry Smartphones as well as PCs/Macs

NEW YORK – 1 JUNE 2010 – Thumbplay^®, the leading provider of mobile entertainment in the U.S., has launched Thumbplay^® Music™ (www.thumbplaymusic.com) in the Apple App Store, becoming the first and only on-demand, subscription music service available across the three major platforms in the U.S. — iPhone^®, Android^™ and BlackBerry^® smartphones. This adds the Apple iPhone® and the iPod Touch® to the growing list of devices supported by Thumbplay Music (complete list below). Thumbplay Music is also available as a companion app on PCs/Macs^®.

With this announcement, Thumbplay Music is the most widely available cloud-based music service available in the U.S. According to the NPD Group, as of the first quarter of 2010, RIM (BlackBerry), Google (Android) and Apple (iPhone) collectively address 85% of smartphone users in the U.S.*

Thumbplay Music has just under 9 million tracks under license from all major labels and more than 35,000 independent labels. Thumbplay Music is a next generation music service, built by experts in mobile content delivery to serve the rapidly growing market of U.S. smartphone users which is forecasted to grow to 160 million people by 2013.**

Said Evan Schwartz, CEO and Co-Founder of Thumbplay, “For the first time, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry fans ALL have unlimited, on demand access to millions of songs. We are certainly proud to be the first to deliver a service across all three platforms, but it’s even more gratifying to have delivered a feature-rich, reliable service that customers in ever-increasing numbers are saying they love.”

Thumbplay Music includes its own in-app media player and boasts several compelling features, including:

• Unlimited, on-demand access to any artist or album; millions of songs to choose from
• Build a personal music collection with Favorites and effortless Playlist creation; auto-sync between smartphone and PC/Mac
• Online and offline access: No connection? No problem! Listen to music on the subway or in-flight. Available anytime, anywhere. (Offline access currently only available on BlackBerry devices; coming soon for Android and iPhone.)
• Genie for music discovery: Instantly generate customized recommendations from favorite songs
• Search: Find music by artist, song, album or genre; includes free previews of all songs
• Import existing iTunes^® playlists within Thumbplay Music’s companion desktop app. With a few clicks, recreate iTunes playlists and have them available on smartphone and PC/Mac.
• Free, “no strings attached” three-day trial; subscriptions are then available for $9.99/month.

Thumbplay, which enjoys sustained profitability, has built an award-winning service centered on delivering millions of pieces of mobile content to 95 percent of U.S. devices among every major carrier. Thumbplay is leveraging its existing network of more than 8,000 distribution partners to promote Thumbplay Music.

* NPD’s wireless market research of smartphone unit sales to consumers: RIM 36%, Android 28 % and Apple 21%. (Q12010)

** Yankee Group (2009)

# # #

ABOUT THUMBPLAY

Thumbplay, Inc. is the leading mobile entertainment provider in the U.S. Thumbplay Music, the company’s cloud-based, streaming music service for smartphones and PCs/Macs, was launched in January 2010 with more than 8 million songs under license. Thumbplay.com features licensed music, video and games from some of the world’s largest entertainment companies, including: EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, as well as several independent labels and artists and video game companies. Headquartered in New York City, Thumbplay was founded in September 2004. Investors include Bain Capital Ventures, SoftBank Capital, i-Hatch Ventures, Redwood Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Meritech, Brookside Capital Partners and Cross Creek Capital. More information can be found at www.thumbplay.com or at m.thumbplay.com from a mobile phone.

Thumbplay Music is available on the Apple iPhone® and the iPod Touch® with an Operating System of 3 or higher.

Thumbplay Music is available on the following smartphones using the Android™ mobile technology platform with an Operating System of 1.6 or higher: DROID Incredible by HTC™, DROID Eris by HTC™, (Motorola™) Droid™, HTC Nexus One™, HTC® G1™ and the HTC® myTouch™ 3G.

Thumbplay Music is currently available on the following BlackBerry^® smartphones: BlackBerry^® Tour™ 2 - Bold™ 9650, BlackBerry^® Bold™ 9000, BlackBerry^® Bold™ 9700, BlackBerry^® Curve™ 8900, BlackBerry^® Tour™ 9630, BlackBerry^® Storm™ 9530, BlackBerry^® Storm™ 2 9550, BlackBerry^® Curve™ 8520 and the BlackBerry^® Curve™ 8530.

All trademarks property of their respective owners. No partnerships implied. The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited.

Labels: press, press-release

New Cloud-Based, On Demand Music Service to be Featured on Carrier Portal: Customers to Have Direct, Unlimited Access to Millions of Songs

NEW YORK (24 May 2010) – Thumbplay^®, the leading provider of mobile entertainment in the U.S. today, and Cellular South^®, the nation’s largest privately owned wireless communications provider, have forged a deal that will give Cellular South customers direct access to the new cloud-based Thumbplay^® Music^™ (www.thumbplaymusic.com) service.

As a result of the partnership, Cellular South customers can get unlimited, on-demand access to millions of songs directly from their wireless handsets and they will be able to download the Thumbplay Music application directly from Cellular South’s Discover Center website. The service will be rolled out soon on Android^™ and BlackBerry^® smartphones.

Thumbplay Music, a next generation music service built by experts in mobile content delivery, has more than 8 million tracks under license from all major labels and more than 35,000 independent labels and comes with a free, three-day trial. Subscriptions are available for $9.99 a month.

“We’re thrilled to be the first to offer Thumbplay Music directly to our customers,” said Jim Richmond, director of Corporate Communications for Cellular South. “Thumbplay Music literally transforms the smartphone into the ultimate, portable music player – it’s loaded with features and an extensive catalog of music that will inspire music fans of all ages and tastes.”

Richmond said recent industry research shows that more consumers than ever are using their mobile devices to download and listen to music. A recent comScore study* revealed that listening to music is the third fastest growing use of mobile phones in the U.S. Richmond added, “Downloading and listening to music is clearly one of the fastest growing and most popular ways that consumers are using their mobile devices.”

Evan Schwartz, CEO and co-founder of Thumbplay, said he expects Cellular South customers to quickly embrace the new service. “They have an extremely engaged, loyal customer base that will fully appreciate having a rich, on-demand music service always at their fingertips,” he added.

Thumbplay Music includes its own in-app media player and boasts several compelling features, including:

· Unlimited, on-demand access to any artist or album; millions of songs to choose from.

· Build a personal music collection with Favorites and Playlist creation; auto-sync between smartphone and PC/Mac.

· Online and offline access: No connection? No problem! Listen to music on the subway or in-flight. Available anytime, anywhere.

· Genie for music discovery: Instantly generate customized recommendations from favorite songs.

· Search: Find music by artist, song, album or genre; includes free previews of all songs.

· Import existing iTunes^® playlists within Thumbplay Music’s companion desktop app. With a few clicks, recreate iTunes playlists and have them available on smartphone and PC/Mac.

Thumbplay, which enjoys sustained profitability, has built an award-winning service centered on delivering mobile entertainment content to 95 percent of U.S. devices on every major wireless carrier. Thumbplay will leverage its existing network of more than 8,000 distribution partners to promote Thumbplay Music.

###

* The study by comScore MobiLens, a mobile marketing research firm, covered the three-month period ending in March 2010. The study reviewed the most popular activities and mobile content accessed by the nation’s 234 million wireless phone users age 13 and order.

About Thumbplay

Thumbplay, Inc. is the leading mobile entertainment provider in the U.S. Thumbplay Music, the company’s cloud-based, streaming music service for smartphones and PCs/Macs, was launched in January 2010 with more than 8 million songs under license. Thumbplay.com features licensed music, video and games from some of the world’s largest entertainment companies, including: EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, as well as several independent labels and artists and video game companies. Headquartered in New York City, Thumbplay was founded in September 2004. Investors include Bain Capital Ventures, SoftBank Capital, i-Hatch Ventures, Redwood Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Meritech, Brookside Capital Partners and Cross Creek Capital. More information can be found at www.thumbplay.com or at m.thumbplay.com from a mobile phone.

About Cellular South

Cellular South is a privately-owned diversified mobile communications company passionately committed to helping customers get the most out of their wireless devices and services. The nation’s largest privately owned wireless communications carrier accomplishes this goal by providing the most reliable and advanced 3G nationwide wireless voice and data network, offering industry-leading smartphone devices and accessible flat rate plans, and through its online and in-store Discover Centers, which give customers easy, simple and convenient tools, tips, advice and information to get the most out of their mobile phone. For more information about Cellular South and its products and services, as well as its ground-breaking Cellular South Original user generated programming, visit www.cellularsouth.com. This news release and other announcements are available at http://www.cellularsouth.com/news/.

Labels: press, press-release

Company to Provide Early Glimpse of Cloud-Based Music Service App Using HTML5 on Google Chrome OS

NEW YORK – 10 MAY 2010 – Thumbplay^®, the leading provider of mobile entertainment in the U.S., announced today that it has been selected to demo its cloud-based Thumbplay^® Music^™ (www.thumbplaymusic.com) service at the 2010 Google^TM I/O Conference, being held May 19-20 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The company will reveal an early release of the Thumbplay Music app running on Google Chrome^TM, which also supports Google’s Chrome operating system and utilizes HTML5 and CSS3. Thumbplay is one of 10 third-party apps to be showcased in the Chrome Pod of the Google I/O Developer Sandbox.

Thumbplay Music is an on-demand, subscription music service currently available on both the fastest-growing and largest smartphone platforms in the U.S., Android^TM and BlackBerry^® smartphones,* respectively. (Complete list of devices below.) The service is also currently available as a companion app on PCs/Macs^® and is coming soon on iPhone^®. Thumbplay Music has more than eight million tracks under license from all major labels and more than 25,000 independent labels.

“To be invited to the Developer Sandbox at Google I/O this year is a credit to our ongoing relationship with Google,” said Evan Schwartz, CEO and Co-Founder of Thumbplay. “With Google’s innovation, our team was able to create a feature-rich app that works beautifully and leverages the ease and simplicity of a browser.”

The Thumbplay Music application for Chrome OS was developed in accordance with the latest HTML5 and CSS3 web standards and will provide future Chrome OS users with unlimited, anytime/anywhere access to millions of songs. In addition, there will be a series of unique, web-based interactive features specific to Thumbplay Music for Chrome OS, such as offline playback and instant synching.

The Google I/O Conference is Google’s largest annual developer event, hosting thousands of leading developers and designers who have created and cultivated applications specific to Google and open web technology. The Developer Sandbox, introduced at the 2009 Google I/O Conference, serves as a select venue for developers to exchange detailed information regarding their services while presenting them to those in attendance at Google I/O. Developers and partners interested in meeting with Thumbplay during Google I/O can request a demo time here: http://developer.thumbplay.com.

Thumbplay Music includes its own in-app media player and boasts several compelling features, including:

· Unlimited, on-demand access to any artist or album; millions of songs to choose from;

· Build a personal music collection with Favorites and effortless Playlist creation; auto-sync between smartphone and PC/Mac;

· Online and offline access: No connection? No problem! Listen to music on the subway or in-flight. Available anytime, anywhere. (Offline access currently only available on BlackBerry devices; coming soon for Android);

· Playlist Genie for music discovery: Instantly generate customized recommendations from favorite songs;

· Search: Find music by artist, song, album or genre; includes free previews of all songs;

· Import existing iTunes^® playlists within Thumbplay Music’s companion desktop app. With a few clicks, recreate iTunes playlists and have them available on smartphone and PC/Mac;

· Free, “no strings attached” three-day trial; subscriptions are then available for $9.99/month.

Thumbplay, which enjoys sustained profitability, has built an award-winning service centered on delivering mobile entertainment content to 95 percent of U.S. devices on every major carrier. Thumbplay will leverage its existing network of more than 8,000 distribution partners to promote Thumbplay Music.

# # #

ABOUT THUMBPLAY

Thumbplay, Inc. is the leading mobile entertainment provider in the U.S. Thumbplay Music, the company’s cloud-based, streaming music service for smartphones and PCs/Macs, was launched in January 2010 with more than 8 million songs under license. Thumbplay.com features licensed music, video and games from some of the world’s largest entertainment companies, including: EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, as well as several independent labels and artists and video game companies. Headquartered in New York City, Thumbplay was founded in September 2004. Investors include Bain Capital Ventures, SoftBank Capital, i-Hatch Ventures, Redwood Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Meritech, Brookside Capital Partners and Cross Creek Capital. More information can be found at www.thumbplay.com or at m.thumbplay.com from a mobile phone.

*According to comScore (April 2010), RIM is the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. and Google’s Android™ platform is the fastest-growing.

Thumbplay Music is available on the following smartphones using the Android™ mobile technology platform with an Operating System of 1.6 or higher: (Motorola™) Droid™, Nexus One™, HTC^® G1™ and the HTC^® myTouch™ 3G

Thumbplay Music is currently available on the following BlackBerry^® smartphones: BlackBerry^® Bold 9000, BlackBerry^® Bold™ 9700, BlackBerry^® Curve™ 8900, BlackBerry^® Tour™ 9630, BlackBerry^® Storm™ 9530 and the BlackBerry^® Storm™ 2 9550

Labels: press, press-release

Premier, Cloud-Based Music Service is the First-of- its-Kind

on Both Android^TM and BlackBerry^® Smartphones

NEW YORK – 3 MAY 2010 – Thumbplay^®, the leading provider of mobile entertainment in the U.S., has launched its cloud-based Thumbplay® Music™ (www.thumbplaymusic.com) service in Android^TM Market, providing the Android fan-base with unlimited, anytime/anywhere access to millions of songs. Thumbplay Music is the only on-demand, subscription music service currently available on both the fastest-growing and largest smartphone platforms in the U.S., Android and BlackBerry^® smartphones,* respectively. (Complete list of devices below.) The service is also available as a companion app on PCs/Macs^® and it is coming soon on iPhone^®.

Thumbplay Music has more than eight million tracks under license from all major labels and more than 25,000 independent labels. Thumbplay Music is a next generation music service, built by experts in mobile content delivery to serve the rapidly growing market of U.S. smartphone users which is forecasted to grow to 160 million people by 2013.**

Said Evan Schwartz, CEO and Co-Founder of Thumbplay, “With Thumbplay Music now live on Android and BlackBerry smartphones, we’re giving tens of millions of people truly portable, anytime, anywhere access to all the music they want. We’ve been getting rave reviews from our Android users in Beta, especially when they employ the companion app on PC and see the power of having their complete music collections and playlists in-sync. We’re thrilled to deliver a music service worthy of discerning Android fans.”

Thumbplay Music includes its own in-app media player and boasts several compelling features, including:

• Unlimited, on-demand access to any artist or album; millions of songs to choose from
• Build a personal music collection with Favorites and effortless Playlist creation; auto-sync between smartphone and PC/Mac
• Online and offline access: No connection? No problem! Listen to music on the subway or in-flight. Available anytime, anywhere. (Offline access currently only available on BlackBerry devices; coming soon for Android.)
• Playlist Genie for music discovery: Instantly generate customized recommendations from favorite songs
• Search: Find music by artist, song, album or genre; includes free previews of all songs
• Import existing iTunes^® playlists within Thumbplay Music’s companion desktop app. With a few clicks, recreate iTunes playlists and have them available on smartphone and PC/Mac.
• Free, “no strings attached” three-day trial; subscriptions are then available for $9.99/month.

Thumbplay, which enjoys sustained profitability, has built an award-winning service centered on delivering millions of pieces of mobile content to 95 percent of U.S. devices among every major carrier. Thumbplay is leveraging its existing network of more than 8,000 distribution partners to promote Thumbplay Music.

# # #

ABOUT THUMBPLAY

Thumbplay, Inc. is defining the mobile entertainment experience for U.S. consumers. Thumbplay.com features licensed music, video and games from some of the world’s largest entertainment companies, including: EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, as well as several independent labels and artists and video game companies. Headquartered in New York City, Thumbplay was founded in September 2004 by Are Traasdahl and Evan Schwartz. Investors include Bain Capital Ventures, SoftBank Capital, i-Hatch Ventures, Redwood Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Meritech, Brookside Capital Partners and Cross Creek Capital. More information can be found at www.thumbplay.com or at m.thumbplay.com from a mobile phone.

*According to comScore (April 2010), RIM is the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. and Google’s Android platform is the fastest-growing.

Thumbplay Music is available on the following smartphones using the Android™ mobile technology platform with an Operating System of 1.6 or higher: (Motorola™) Droid™, Nexus One™, HTC® G1™ and the HTC® myTouch™ 3G.

Thumbplay Music is currently available on the following BlackBerry® smartphones: BlackBerry^® Bold 9000, BlackBerry^® Bold™ 9700, BlackBerry^® Curve™ 8520, BlackBerry^® Curve™ 8530, BlackBerry^® Curve™ 8900, BlackBerry^® Tour™ 9630, BlackBerry^® Storm™ 9530 and the BlackBerry^® Storm™ 2 9550.

**Yankee Group (2009)

All trademarks property of their respective owners. No partnerships implied. The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited.

Labels: press, press-release

NEW YORK – 26 APRIL 2010 – Thumbplay® MusicTM, which launched its cloud-based music service in January 2010 at CES as a featured partner of RIM®, was also the first to launch in the U.S. with such features as offline playback. Thumbplay Music is currently featured on numerous BlackBerry® smartphones; BlackBerry is the definitive U.S. smartphone leader with more than 42% marketshare.* Thumbplay Music is also available as a companion app on PCs/Macs® and it is coming soon on AndroidTM and iPhone®.

Since launch, Thumbplay Music reports that such features as offline playback (also known as caching), and Playlist Genie, its music discovery tool, have been among the most-used features of the service.

Thumbplay Music includes its own in-app media player and boasts several compelling features, including:

• Unlimited, on-demand access to any artist or album; millions of songs to choose from
• Build a personal music collection with Favorites and effortless Playlist creation; auto-sync between smartphone and PC/Mac
• Online and offline access: No connection? No problem! Listen to music on the subway or in-flight. Available anytime, anywhere.
• Playlist Genie for music discovery: Instantly generate customized recommendations from favorite songs
• Search: Find music by artist, song, album or genre; includes free previews of all songs
• Import existing iTunes® playlists within Thumbplay Music’s companion desktop app. With a few clicks, recreate iTunes playlists and have them available on smartphone and PC/Mac.
• Free, “no strings attached” three-day trial

Thumbplay Music has more than eight million tracks under license from all major labels and more than 25,000 independent labels. Thumbplay Music is a next generation music service, built by experts in mobile content delivery to serve the rapidly growing market of U.S. smartphone users which is forecasted to grow to 160 million people by 2013.**

Thumbplay, which enjoys sustained profitability, has built an award-winning service centered on delivering millions of pieces of mobile content to 95 percent of U.S. devices among every major carrier. Thumbplay is leveraging its existing network of more than 8,000 distribution partners to promote Thumbplay Music.

ABOUT THUMBPLAY
Thumbplay, Inc. is defining the mobile entertainment experience for U.S. consumers. Thumbplay.com features licensed music, video and games from some of the world’s largest entertainment companies, including: EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, as well as several independent labels and artists and video game companies. Headquartered in New York City, Thumbplay was founded in September 2004 by Are Traasdahl and Evan Schwartz. Investors include Bain Capital Ventures, SoftBank Capital, i-Hatch Ventures, Redwood Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Meritech, Brookside Capital Partners and Cross Creek Capital. More information can be found at www.thumbplay.com or at m.thumbplay.com from a mobile phone.

*According to comScore (April 2010)

Thumbplay Music is currently available on the following BlackBerry® smartphones: BlackBerry® Bold 9000, BlackBerry® Bold™ 9700, BlackBerry® Curve™ 8520, BlackBerry® Curve™ 8530, BlackBerry® Curve™ 8900, BlackBerry® Tour™ 9630, BlackBerry® Storm™ 9530 and the BlackBerry® Storm™ 2 9550.

**Yankee Group (2009)

All trademarks property of their respective owners. No partnerships implied. The BlackBerry and RIM families of related marks, images and symbols are the exclusive properties and trademarks of Research In Motion Limited.

Labels: press-release

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RYAN NAKASHIMA

The Associated Press

(AP) — LOS ANGELES - There's no more need to own songs before being able to listen to them at your convenience.

No more stacking your CDs on shelves or buying music to download onto computers and mobile devices. Virtually the whole world of recorded music is at your fingertips at any time, for a subscription, over the Internet.

Services that make this scenario possible haven't proven very popular yet. But now price cuts and advances in technology could finally drive the idea to the mainstream.

For instance, Rhapsody International Inc. and Thumbplay Inc. now offer the ability to pick almost any song or album and play it instantly on a mobile device that connects to the Internet over cell phone networks. The services are $10 a month.

Justin Darcy, a 32-year-old sales director at a resort company in San Francisco, says he consumes so much music it would cost him $10,000 a year if he didn't have a Rhapsody plan. He calls it "one of the greatest values in consumer goods I've ever come across."

Given the obvious benefit of being able to listen to millions of songs as if they were in your personal stash, why haven't services like these gotten more use?

Partly because of poor marketing, previously clunky execution and the fact that people are more familiar with compact discs and downloading songs from Apple Inc.'s iTunes music store. People who spend less than $120 a year on music also wouldn't see the subscription plans as such a great deal.

But the music providers hope they can get more customers by making the services easier to use, taking advantage of increasingly robust cell phone networks to deliver the music. And in general, consumers are getting more comfortable using many kinds of services that rely on files stored on distant computers and accessed remotely, a concept known as "cloud computing."

The subscription services have come down in price-they generally were $15 a month until recently-and broader adoption could push prices lower still. One big boost could come if Apple begins offering such a service. In December it bought an online music retailer called Lala.com that offers access to songs that users can store in a digital locker. Apple declined to comment on its plans.

The subscription services funnel royalties to recording companies, which are eager for new revenue streams to replace CD sales. That once-lucrative business has been declining for years as consumers have shifted to buying individual tracks or pirating music altogether.

"We are very bullish on the prospects of subscriptions over time," says Michael Nash, executive vice president of digital strategy for Warner Music Group Corp.

One problem is finding the right price for the service and having as many people as possible sign up. If only hard-core music fans subscribe because it lets them reduce their spending, the music industry might end up cannibalizing its other sales.

Right now the median U.S. music buyer spends about $80 a year-not enough to make these new services a revolutionary deal, according to Sonal Gandhi, a Forrester Research media analyst. More than half of consumers don't spend anything at all.

She predicts the number of U.S. subscribers for such plans will rise from 2.1 million now to 5 million by 2014. Why not more? Among other things, "not everyone wants to be tied to a monthly bill," she says. One solution could be for wireless carriers to bundle a music subscription with their monthly services. Nearly 450,000 Vodafone customers in Europe signed up for unlimited access to 2 million songs last year when the plan was added to a wireless data package for 3 euros ($4) a month.

Previous music subscription plans had another problem: They made consumers download songs to their computers and transfer them to approved mobile devices-and none included the iPhone or iPod.

That's changing. A $10 monthly plan from MOG Inc. will let people stream music instantly on iPhones and devices that run Google Inc.'s Android software, beginning in May.

Users can make unlimited downloads to the device so they have access to music on a plane or in other settings without wireless coverage. MOG's service also has an intelligent shuffle function that lets people control whether randomly selected songs come from just one artist or many similar sounding ones.

MOG's CEO and founder, David Hyman, predicts such services will prove so popular that they'll replace CDs and downloads eventually.

"If you're the kind of consumer that spends $6 to $10 a month on music, this just blows everything else away," Hyman says.

Another new service, Thumbplay, works on several BlackBerry models, and there are plans to launch it on Android devices and iPhones soon, also for $10 a month. To ease iTunes users into the service, the application can copy iTunes playlists immediately over the air, saving potential converts the trouble of remaking them.

"The first thing that we want to do is just accept that probably 100 million people out there are using iTunes and make it easy for them to make the transition," says CEO Evan Schwartz.

Each of these services has a huge catalog that includes songs from all the major recording companies and many independents. MOG has 7 million tracks. Thumbplay boasts 8 million and Rhapsody claims 9.5 million. None, however, has access to bands that have chosen to remain away from digital outlets, such as the Beatles.

There are other ways to listen to music from the cloud, of course. But subscription plans are needed if you want to pick exact songs or albums.

For instance, free services like Pandora's Internet radio allow you to select tunes by genre or theme and hear them on portable devices, but you can't choose the precise song or artist you want. Online music services such as MySpace Music allow you to select specific songs or albums-for free, with the site supported by advertising-but you can listen to the tracks only on a computer.

No distributor has been able to combine the elements of Pandora and MySpace Music and launch a free, on-demand, mobile music service. Advertisers aren't yet willing to pay enough to cover the higher royalties that recording companies charge for mobile song streams.

That leaves many people in the music business hoping that the marriage of subscription plans to better mobility will be the spark that helps reverse the industry's decline.

"The Holy Grail is going to be cross-platform, meaning that one subscription lets me hear it on my connected device, on my home computer, on my stereo, in my car," says Donald Passman, a music business lawyer in Los Angeles and author of "All You Need to Know About the Music Business."

That multi-device capability was the appeal Rhapsody's service held for Alex Barberis, a 27-year-old software engineer in Miami.

Barberis got a Rhapsody subscription as a Christmas present from his brother, but he was about to cancel the plan because the Web site was slow and he didn't have an approved device on which to transfer downloads. However, Barberis changed his mind after Rhapsody released an iPhone application that allows unlimited streaming of 9.5 million songs for $9.99 a month on iPhones and Android devices and works with home stereo systems and in cars.

Barberis says the service isn't perfect. It hiccups if he loses cell phone reception in his car. But Rhapsody says it will fix that problem soon by allowing songs to be stored on devices for playback outside of cell phone coverage.

"I think overall I'm probably going to try it out for a little while more," Barberis says.

http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/business-66/1271371858265660.xml&storylist=business&thispage=1

Labels: press