Digital music is generally consumed in two fashions: through streaming services such as Spotify or from files downloaded via online stores such as iTunes.
Muve Music, developed in a Greenwood Village office tower by prepaid wireless carrier Cricket Communications, combines key elements of both.
For now, Muve is available only to Cricket subscribers as part of a $10-a-month premium.
The service offers unlimited downloads from a music library of 5 million titles, roughly a third of the tracks available on leading streaming services Rhapsody and Spotify. Cricket says the Muve library should double this year.
Rather than streaming, Muve tunes are downloaded onto a subscriber’s phone as compact digital files. The songs are about a quarter of the size of standard music files, cutting the download time to a minute or so on a 3G connection.
But the downside of the smaller size, at least for audiophiles, is sound quality. Muve music files are encoded at 32 kilobits per second, which is about a fourth the bitrate of a typical music file.
I’m not an audiophile, so the quality suited me just fine.
Downloading rather than streaming songs allows users to listen to their tunes even when they don’t have a network connection, such as during a flight. Spotify’s $10-a-month premium service also allows users to download tunes, but that’s not the default option.
About 3,000 songs can be stored on the encrypted memory card included with the handful of Cricket phones that feature Muve.
One of the top selling points of the service is the ability of users to easily create ringtones and ringback tones of downloaded songs. But this feature is still in its infancy, as I was able to create ringtones for just about 10 percent of the songs I downloaded.
Muve’s senior director of product, John Bolton, said licensing issues play a role in the company’s ability to offer every song as a ringtone. But the company is working to expand the library songs that can be turned into ringtones.
Like other subscription services, once you cancel your service, you lose access to your downloaded songs. Another limitation is the encryption technology on the memory card won’t let you transfer songs to other devices.
Perhaps the biggest drawbacks are the user interface and search function. The Muve app is not nearly as appealing and user friendly as Spotify’s mobile program, which allows you to easily see other songs from the same album. And on Muve, search results sometimes show secondary versions of songs rather than the original.
“We’re aware of some of those challenges,” Bolton said. “There’s ways to do it better and we’re working on that.”
All in all, Cricket appears to have a winner on its hands with Muve, which topped 500,000 subscribers a year after launching in January 2011.
Andy Vuong : 303-954-1209 or
