Best Buy announces own Music Cloud service

It seems like everyone has their heads in the clouds these days. With a growing emphasis on synchronizing media purchases and applications on multiple mobile devices and computers, retailer Best Buy is launching Music Cloud.

The service is available for devices powered by Apple's iOS, Google's Android, and Research In Motion's BlackBerry operating systems and requires downloading software that enables music streaming.

The desktop app copies libraries and playlists from iTunes on a home computer and puts them in an account to be accessed on multiple mobile devices. It's powered by Catch Media's Play Anywhere service.

"With Best Buy Music Cloud, your digital music lives in one place but you access it from wherever you are," according to the Best Buy web site. "Enjoy all your music when you're at a friend's house, in the car, on the bus, walking to work ... virtually anywhere."

"You can store your favorite songs and playlists for when you're offline," it adds. "You can select just a single song, a playlist, or even an artist, allowing you to continue listening when you don't have coverage."

The premium version is available for $3.99 and, a demo version is available with 30-second playbacks of your songs.

Best Buy's Music Cloud comes on the heels of Apple rolling out iCloud to synchronize media purchases across computers and its mobile devices. iCloud was the major announcement by CEO Steve Jobs at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference this month. Google and Amazon.com have also launched cloud music services.

Earlier this month, at the E3 conference, Best Buy announced a Reward Zone Gamers Club that offers points toward purchases.

Cricket Communications launches music service for mobile phones

Cricket Communications is launching a new music service for wireless customers, offering unlimited song downloads as part of a monthly rate plan.

For $55 per month, Cricket - part of low-cost carrier Leap Wireless International Inc - will sell a combined voice, data and text plan, along with all-you-can-download music, starting in January.

The company said the new Muve service will offer music from the four major record labels: Vivendi's Universal Music Group; Warner Music Group; Sony Music Entertainment and EMI Music.

"Muve will always have all the major content that all the major labels have," said Jeff Toig, general manager of voice and data products at Cricket.

Unlike some other digital music services, Muve is rooted in the mobile phone itself. It will launch on the $199 Samsung Suede, which is equipped with a special card from flash memory maker SanDisk. The Suede will be able to hold between 2,000 to 3,000 songs.

The music is stored on and tied to the card, and cannot be removed. If a customer stops paying for Muve, they lose access to the music.

Toig said Muve will also be available on smartphones running Google's Android software in the future.

Leap - which plans to rename itself as "Cricket" - competes with MetroPCS and Sprint-Nextel's unit Boost Mobile, and caters to the pay-as-you-go market, which has low average revenue per user.

Cricket operates in 34 U.S. states and counts more than 5 million customers. The vast majority of its customers pay in cash and have incomes less than $50,000 a year. Around half are under the age of 35 and do not have a personal computer.

Toig said Muve represents a different approach than music services like Apple's iTunes, which are rooted in PCs and require a credit card to buy music.

He declined to say how Cricket will split sales with the music labels, but said the deal is based on the number of subscribers.

"Our models are aligned, they're paid per sub, per month," Toig said.

Nokia brings mobile music to China

Top mobile phone maker Nokia brought its music download service to the key Chinese market and said it would also launch the service, which competes with Apple's iTunes, in India.

"Globally, we have expanded the reach of our music service to 30 markets in just 18 months," Liz Schimel, global head of music at the Finnish company said in a statement.

China is the world's biggest cellphone market and analysts said Nokia's "Comes with Music" service launch there was important but added the service had seen slow pickup elsewhere and remained far behing Apple's iTunes in popularity.

"Comes with Music has not been a success in any market. Volumes have been small," said Martti Larjo, an analyst with Nordea Markets.

Nokia said buyers of eight of its phone models across China would get "unlimited music downloads" of song catalogues from global lables Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI Music, and local independent labels, including Huayi Brothers Media Group and Taihe Rye.

The phone models included in the service have a starting retail price of 140 euros (186 dollars), excluding local taxes and subsidies, Nokia said, adding local artists featured prominently in the Chinese version of the service.