MusicStation: Music downloading that works for mobiles!

When Ewan informed me of a music downloading service for £1.99 a week, that was actually good, I honestly thought he was pulling my leg. It was either that, or the service was seriously flawed.

I was wrong.

MusicStation is quite simply, pretty amazing. What I thought really couldn’t work, or ever be good (especially on a mobile device for so cheap), actually is.

The library available is massive; and originally I was expecting to find that some of the more obscure music I like to listen to wouldn’t actually be available; but it all is.  I searched for a bunch of oldies I love, and even the newer music which isn’t widely known. All there isn’t a genre which isn’t covered, which meant I was happily able to enjoy some Mozart, Candi Staton and even a little Slipknot for when the desire arose.

The one big flaw I was expecting was poor sound quality. There is nothing worse than listening to music being streamed at a mere 96kps, and I have made it a rule that all such music must never reach my ears. So I was pleasantly surprised when I heard the quality of the tracks.

Definitely not 96kps.

When played through speakers, admittedly there is a slight lossiness to the quality, and there isn’t as much actually punch in the tracks than say if you had them in a hard copy. But for general listening, and with a good pair of headphones, it shouldn’t be that much of a concern.

The application as a whole is fast, and simple to use. It has simple menus to navigate, and you can even use the rest of your mobile with MusicStation still running.

Quite possibly one of the best things about MusicStation, is the download speeds. I’ve been using a non-3G connection (due to the lack of 3G coverage), and each song on average has taken around 90 seconds. This does depend entirely on the length of the song, but even so it’s still fairly quick.

Some of the downsides to MusicStation have to be the fact you don’t actually have the songs stored on your phone; which means you can’t move them around. This though, is a copyright protective aid more than anything else I think.

Then there is the battery life!
You have to expect that being connected to the internet full time, you will be drowning a few of the mobile’s resources, but in general it’s not practical. I was using it during a certain meeting I had last Wednesday, and after two hours there was barely any life left at all. You certainly cannot expect more than a couple of hours out of a fully charged mobile with MusicStation – but at least you’ll be enjoying some brilliant music though!

The music library isn’t yet fully equipped to my standards, and there are certainly more tracks, albums and artists that should be listed too. For example, Frankie Knuckle’s brilliant song “Your Love”, not there! I admit I was a little disappointed. There were a few others too which I was sad to see, were not available; hopefully more will be added though.

In all though, I’m immensely surprised, MusicStation is nothing other than brilliant. It has a few flaws, which everything has, but I’m sure eventually battery issues will be a thing for the past.

There is though, one final issue with this…
It’s only available for Vodafone customers.

Vodafone, from what I’ve seen of it, is mainly an operator who attracts business customers or adults in general. I don’t know of a single friend who is on Vodafone; and of all the friends that I have told about MusicStation, not a single one has said “oh, that sounds crap” or “I wouldn’t pay that much”. So why then, is a music service, which would have huge custom with the teenagers of today, not, broadening itself to other operators?

I hope that this is changed soon, because I would probably pay for it.