Musical chairs for music download providers
Musiwave, which recently signed Vodafone UK as a customer for its mobile music platform, has been dumped by 3UK as provider of that operator’s full tack download platform. 3UK’s new provider is Groove Mobile, which provides services to Orange, Telenor and TMN in Europe, as well as to Sprint in the USA.
Adam Sexton, Groove Mobile’s Chief Marketing Officer, said that Groove is able to provide enhanced handset support, increased scaleability, good relationships with music labels and understanding of the music industry.
The company was also able to offer 3’s Music Store customers the ability to purchase tracks from their PC, for dual download to PC and mobile.
With Orange, Groove operates via its own client on customer handsets, whereas 3 operates a WAP service, but Sexton said that because of wider handset support for certain browser and configuration settings, the company can support more handsets that Musiwave could.
Groove is also using 3’s DRM, rather than its own DRM.
So with Vodafone using Musiwave, does that mean that 3UK’s service is more scaleable, can reach more handsets and has better feature sets than Vodafone’s?
“Yeah,” said Sexton. “And it’s not just about making sure the pipes are working, what you’re putting in the pipes is as important,” he added.