Better gadgets, more free streaming raises mobile music stakes

Since the iPhone eliminated many a consumer's need for a separate music player, music-as-content has helped keep phones glued to users and made the devices still more indispensible. Toward this end, contributions are coming from software and hardware makers alike, as we've especially seen in the last months.

Europe's favorite streaming music service, Spotify, arrived on U.S. shores in July (CP: Spotify, with its streaming gigabytes of music, arrives in U.S.), Cricket Wireless' unlimited Muve Music service attracted eyebrow-raising numbers of subscribers, and number-five carrier MetroPCS, taking note, teamed with Rhapsody to offer a similar service (CP: MetroPCS teams with Rhapsody, taking a play from Cricket's Muve Music).

Meanwhile, count two new entrants in the free streaming music market, Rdio and MOG, which each announced this week to cut all charges for their Web-based players – opting to monetize their services with premium upgrades that in both cass include access on mobile devices.

Yesterday, meanwhile, also saw the launch of TriPlay's cloud-based MyMusicCloud service, which works across any platform and on any phone or tablet, enabling users to access 11 million songs and listen online or off. Users can store 2GB of music free, or an extra 5GB for $10 annually.

TriPlay, in press materials, notes that 73% of iPad owners are said to have a phone other an iPhone, and the DoubleTwist app, standing out among troves of music-friendly apps, similarly caters to this crossover space, enabling Android users to access their iTunes playlists.

As for hardware, there's no want for music players in devices, but HTC today purports to be elevating the space, investing in Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine's Beats Electronics, in a partnership intended to bring studio-level music quality to HTC handsets.

HTC phones with integrated Beats technology, said the company, will be arriving this fall.

Gartner Media Industry Advisory Vice President Mike McGuire, in the MyMusicCloud statement, noted the growing importance of music access to consumers, and their now expectation to access files at any time, on any device.

"Enabling consumers to share their taste in music across their social graphs, coupled with the ability to drive incremental transactions from their social-network friends," said McGuire, "is the type of alignment between online stores, consumer devices and online services that will be increasingly important for music-industry stakeholders and consumers.”