VZW links song ID service to music portal

Verizon Wireless today said it is linking its Song ID service into the V Cast movie store, creating a one-stop venue for customers to identify, search and buy full-track music downloads.

V Cast Song ID has been available to customers for some time, powered by U.K. developer’s Shazam’s music ID software. The service launches an application, which opens up a voice connection to a network song data base. A customer merely holds the phone up to the audio source and after capturing a few seconds of audio, returns the song’s name and artist as well as a menu of purchase options. Until today, those options included ringtones and ringback tones, but Verizon Wireless is now selling full-track songs from that same portal, giving it a bonus discovery avenue for its music store.

The Song ID service can identify four million individual song tracks, while the V Cast Music Store sells 1.8 million tracks, giving VZW a significant overlap between songs available for sale and those that can be identified. The service is available over any V Cast phone, and Verizon Wireless is offering the service for free to encourage more music discovery.

Verizon Wireless now charges $2.00 for a full-track download over the air (with a second version of the song sent to an email address for PC download) and $1.00 for a download to directly to the PC. So far, customers have been using the service almost exclusively as a wireless service. A VZW spokesman said that 95% of all downloaded music comes is received over the 3G network as opposed to through the wireline Internet portal.