Sprint looks to music subscriptions

Mar 29 2006 - 11:51 AM ET | Sprint Nextel

Sprint Nextel is considering a music subscription service according to comments from CEO Len Lauer at the World Congress of Sports conference. Subscriptions have had limited success in online music delivery, with most rivals to Apple's iTunes having some sort of subscription service (though in market share terms its popularity is still limited).

"We'd like to have the capability later this year that the customer listens to a song and says, 'I want to buy that song,"' he told the audience during his keynote speech at the conference.

Songs downloaded from Sprint handsets currently cost $2.50, which is a hefty premium over desktop PC downloads. Lauer did not hint at possible pricing for a streaming subscription. Sprint's music download service racked up over a million downloads, but the company has not revealed how many of those are paid versus given away for free for promotion.

[via PhoneScoop]