| Verizon hopes Prince will help cream iPhone |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Saturday, 02 June 2007 | |
  
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If you’re a Verizon customer but don’t own one of the phones above, there might be hope – Verizon plans to expand the offer to other V CAST capable Verizon cell phones, without specifying which ones they plan to enable just yet. The exclusive deal offers some of Verizon’s existing and potential new customers a way to download a free single from Prince’s new album, and true to interactive marketing form, seeks to engage Verizon customers in using a handy Verizon feature to get Guitar for free. Verizon has a service called V CAST Song ID. Similar to the same feature on Sony Ericsson phones, the Song ID software previously only worked if you paid to use it each time, although Verizon has now made the Song ID service free of charge. What Verizon customers must do is first download the V CAST Song ID software to your phone if you don’t already have it. Logging into the V CAST service on your Verizon to download the app free. Step two is to visit the Verizon Music website or licensed sites such as YouTube, Revver, Veoh and MySpace and to do a search for Prince and Guitar. The next step is to start the V CAST Song ID service on your phone, then select “ID New Song”, and then play the interactive video from the hot new Prince single, “Guitar” from the online you’ve chosen to visit. Put the phone close to the PC speaker as it’s playing Prince’s new song, and the Song ID service will record some of the music, send it back to Verizon’s servers for instant analysis and will identify it as Prince’s song, Guiter. It’s at this point that you’ll receive more information about the song Guitar, and it’s here that you’ll now be given the option to download the song to your phone, immediately, over-the-air, to keep on your phone, free of charge, and listen to when you like. Of course, Verizon could have simply offered their customers a download link when they first bring the V CAST service, but then valuable exposure for and usage of the free V CAST Song ID service would have been lost. Verizon are calling it a ‘direct-to-mobile’ relationship between themselves and Prince, and say that it is ‘unprecedented in the music industry’, delivering ‘an entirely new way for fans to experience music’. Well… let’s hope that a) the song is good and b) the song survives the 32kbps AAC+ encoding I’m assuming they’re using. Often, cell phone companies that offer music services use the 32kbps AAC+ format because it squeezes songs right down in size so they transfer quickly to your phone, but just as a 128kbps MP3 file can sound much tinnier than a full CD quality song, so can 32kbps AAC+. The Song ID service isn’t just for identifying songs, but also a service to let you purchase music that you hear and that Song ID identifies. Once the song is known, V CAST will offer to sell it to you in one of three ways – as a ring tone, as a ringback (or call back) tone which callers to your number will hear over the standard ‘ring ring’ sound, or the full song itself. It should be noted that the Verizon/Prince deal only includes a free download of the song itself through this service – should you want it as a ring tone or a ringback tone, you’ll need to pay. Verizon thinks the ability to download music directly over-the-air right to your cell phone is a big thing, but so far it hasn’t been anywhere near successful as iTunes. What has been successful in the cell phone world is the selling of ringtones at prices far exceeding what iTunes charges for the full track. John Stratton, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Verizon, noted, “When Prince, who has consistently been on the cutting edge of music, harnesses innovative technology to deliver his fresh new music, that’s a tremendous opportunity for music lovers across the country. At Verizon, we’re committed to delivering hot multimedia services to the public in a way that’s powerful, direct and relevant.” At the end of the day, it’s a bit of a to stunt to attract attention. Prince is a popular artist, blessed with plenty of hits but also having experienced low points in his career. Although expectations are high his 2007 album ‘Planet Earth’ will do well, only time will tell whether consumers think the album is worth it. One thing’s for sure, however: Prince is not enough for Verizon to beat the iPhone challenge, not even if Prince changed his name again to iPrince. But it’s the first salvo from Verizon in the coming iPhone/AT&T phone war – it certainly will be interesting to see what Verizon come up with next!{moscomment} |
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