Carphone Warehouse launches Music Anywhere
A dream for the pirates - or is it?
The Carphone Warehouse has announced a new music-streaming service that promises to put you in control of your tunes on the go.
Instead of pulling songs from your home PC, the desktop application will scan your computer to see what songs you have - those that aren't named correctly will have a snippet of music listened to and identified in that manner.
You then install an application on your BlackBerry, iPhone or Android device and stream the music direct to your handset.
Streamed but not streamed
The music isn't streamed from your PC - it's matched to the Music Anywhere locker on the internet, so your machine doesn't have to be turned on to access the tracks.
Obviously, this will be a worry for those that have music obtained less than legitimately but the alliance states that not only will pirated music play fine, but because it has a licensing deal that sees the music labels get royalties every time the song is played, they're actually making money from a file that they wouldn't have usually.
Great news if you have stuff downloaded in low bit-rate formats, as you'll get the upgraded experience for free, but if you're a high-end encoder then you'll probably notice a dip in the music's sound.
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Piracy never pays
However, this may not be the case in all situations, as the terms and conditions of the service state "in extreme cases where it becomes apparent that most of a person's music collection has been fact pirated, Music Anywhere reserves the right to terminate the service", according to Music Ally.
It's £29.99 per year to use the service, and users who buy the Samsung Galaxy Europa will get the service for free.
Carphone Warehouse users will also get 2GB free on the cloud to use the service without needing to sign up, and there's a movie version in the works as well.
But it will be interesting to see whether this Spotify semi-rival will succeed in a marketplace already becoming fairly flooded with streaming applications, or whether users will simply invest in a phone with more storage to carry their songs with them that way.
Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grew with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.