Music Ally

Vodafone Group has announced that it has signed up more than 450,000 customers for its music subscription services since agreeing DRM-free deals with all the major labels last year.

The operator says it now has a catalogue of more than two million MP3 tracks, and plans to increase this to more than six million in 2010. But it’s the 450,000 figure that it’s trumpeting loudest, saying it now has the largest number of paying music subscribers in Europe.

Vodafone says it signed up more than 100,000 customers to its music services in December alone, in its eight largest European markets. The operator is selling 10-track monthly MP3 bundles, alongside unlimited access subscription services.

“We are really excited by our customers’ reaction to these great music offers,” says Vodafone’s Lee Epting. “We expect to see continued growth in our music service subscriptions driven by the increase in smartphone use, with their worry-free data tariffs and great value add-ons such as music bundles.”

All four major labels have hailed the news, with UMG’s Francis Keeling saying the operator is “demonstrating leadership” in the music subscriptions field, while WMG’s Eric Daugan says that the figures “demonstrate the opportunities created when mobile companies and music labels are aligned in offering easy, instant access to content, in ways that cater for a variety of fan behaviour”.

Tags: Vodafone

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 10:06 am and is filed under Digital Music News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.