mSpot cuts the cord on music synch

Where mobile music is considered, mSpot CEO Daren Tsui thinks the wireless connection on a phone is squandered on paid music downloads. Honestly, how many songs does the typical customer download each month — especially when individual tracks cost as much as $2.50? Two, three, a half dozen max? Tsui has a different proposition for customers and carriers: Instead of trying to sell wireless music, why not optimize a customer's music collection for wireless?

mSpot is introducing a new music application called Remix, which accesses a customer's remote digital music library using a 2.5G or 3G wireless connection. The network swaps files back and forth over the air between the PC and phone, giving a customer access to his or her entire music collection instead of the limited number of songs a phone is capable of storing. A listing of all a subscriber's song files appears in a client from which a user can then generate playlists. Songs already saved in the phone are played immediately while the client retrieves songs from the PC and downloads them in a compressed file format over the wireless data connection. Once the phone runs out of memory, the client can be configured to automatically delete songs or a user can manually select files to discard.

“We think the phone is an always-connected device,” Tsui said. “You should be able to take advantage of that synchronize over the air.”

Remix combines all of mSpot's other applications, including its streaming radio service and video-on-demand service, into a single application. Initially, mSpot plans to offer the synchronization service for free in order to drive users to its paid applications. mSpot will eventually offer it to carriers as a white-label service, Tsui said.

“Apple is going to have a lot of success with the iPhone,” Tsui said. “But guess what? If you don't have $600 to spend on an iPhone, people will start looking for alternatives. We're offering those alternatives.”