eMusic, the world’s second-biggest online music retailer behind Apple, and AT&T have announced the launch of eMusic Mobile. It’s a new Over The Air (OTA) service for AT&T’s cell phone customers. The service costs $7.49 per month for five tracks, and additional packages are available.
Songs purchased from eMusic Mobile are delivered immediately to the user’s wireless handset, and a duplicate copy is available for download to the user’s computer as well. The music available for download to the computer is in MP3 format, so it doesn’t have any Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions. Songs are available for preview prior to purchase.
eMusic Mobile provides access to a catalog of 2.7 million songs from independent musicians and music labels. That doesn’t mean that eMusic’s offerings are obscure, however — the service features Paul McCartney’s latest album, along with music from indie darlings like Spoon and Arcade Fire.
The service fee is similarly structure to eMusic’s typical offering for PCs, which charges a flat rate for a specific number of downloads per month. The fee is higher, obviously, for eMusic Mobile than it is for the “conventional” eMusic service.
For now, it appears that the service is limited to specific AT&T phones. The company lists models from Samsung and Nokia as capable of accessing eMusic Mobile, but notes that “many [are] to be added in the future.”