A look at Cricket's Muve Music service

Cricket made headlines by announcing Muve Music. A music store on a mobile handset is nothing new, but Cricket was going for something completely different here. Instead of offering downloads to your computer, which you could move to your phone, or charging a monthly subscription fee, they put everything onto the phone. That is, you download right to the phone and listen from the phone. The price is built right into your monthly subscription. It sounds like a tough service to get off the ground, but given Phone Scoop’s review, it sounds like it could be a winner. We know the downsides. First, you have to download over the air to your handset, so you’ll certainly have times where you don’t have a strong enough signal to download. You also need a special microSD card, from which the songs cannot leave. The rest of it, though, sounds great. The songs are compressed to 32 Kbps, which sounds horrible, but seems to work. It might have been Phone Scoop’s high-end ear buds that made the difference, and I’ll certainly reserve comment until I hear them through a regular old pair of headphones. I’m something of an audiophile, so 32 Kbps sounds offensive. But I know that it can work in some settings. In any case, check out the whole review for a complete rundown of the service. It has been delayed, but it should be rolled out to certain markets starting at the end of the month. ]]>