Carphone Warehouse launches mobile music service

The Music Anywhere service has been welcomed by the beleaguered music industry as a positive move.

For £29.99 a year, customers will have access to their entire music collection from one mobile device and multiple computers.  The new technology works by “memorising” a user’s music collection and then sourcing high quality versions of those songs, which can then be streamed on demand.

Music Anywhere, which is free to customers buying a Samsung handset, will match the users’ collection with its own licensed catalogue of music and does not distinguish between pirated and bought music, meaning the artist and writer will be paid every time their track is played. It will also collect data for music companies on exactly what music is being listened to, which could then be used for targeted marketing campaigns.

Carphone Warehouse’s decision to launch a service that aims to help people make the most of their existing catalogue of music is understood to have surprised the music industry due to the retailer’s stance against the Digital Economy Bill.

The controversial bill, since passed as the Digital Economy Act 2010, contained measures aimed at curbing peer-to-peer file sharing, including banning those found to be illegally sharing files from using internet.