The Norwegian mobile DRM vendor BeepScience and Sony Network Services Europe
on Tuesday
launched StreamMan, a mobile streaming music service that features on-demand
streaming as well as downloads and radio-style music channels. Telia
Sonera of Finland is the first carrier to offer the service. BeepScience's
DRM technology is based on the OMA DRM 2.0 standard and initially supports
mobile devices with the Symbian operating system.
StreamMan is the most feature-packed of the new generation of European music
services, which have finally begun to move beyond ringtone downloads, although
some other services (including T-Mobile's Mobile Jukebox and O2's Music Pack)
also offer full-fidelity music track downloads. In fact, there is little
difference in music features between StreamMan and a subscription Internet
service for PCs such as Napster or RealNetworks's Rhapsody. StreamMan offers a
large library of music licensed from major as well as independent record labels.
Now that prices of basic mobile phones have plummeted to the point where they
are given away with many new subscriberships, mobile device companies are
counting on services like StreamMan to drive sales of higher-margin devices.
Expect several more such services to be announced in good time for the holiday
season, including some in the
Asia-Pacific region that are powered by Hitachi
and CoreMedia's OMA-compliant DRM. It continues to be good to see an open
standard taking off in the market as quickly as OMA DRM 2.0 is.
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