ATLien_0 Posted June 24, 2014 Share Posted June 24, 2014 Got a text from T-mobile the other day. All Simple Choice plans, which are the limited data plans can now stream music from many of the popular music service with no hit on your data use. Pretty awesome if you ask me. T-Mobile really sticking it to the competitors. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/personal/2014/06/18/t-mobile-free-music-streaming/10781679/ T-Mobile is hitting some new notes in its drive to lure customers from the competition: free phone trials and free music streaming. Want to test an iPhone 5s? Starting Monday, you can sign up for a free seven-day trial on T-Mobile's websiteand the service provider will send you one for no money down. If you decide to return it to a T-Mobile store, you won't be charged. Other carriers "ask you to buy blind," said T-Mobile CEO John Legere in a statement. "The way this industry forces Americans to buy wireless is completely, utterly broken. I'm here to tell you there's a better way." The free trial is just the latest in the No. 4 carrier's moves to gain market share. T-Mobile has agreed to pay early-termination fees for customers who switch from other carriers and has eliminated wireless contracts and gotten rid of overage fees. As a result, T-Mobile says it added 2.4 million customers in the first quarter, up from 579,000 a year earlier. The free trial "makes great sense when paired with their offer to pay off a customer's ETF (early termination fee) if they change operators," said Rich Karpinski, senior analyst with the Yankee Group. "The test drive is the offer, and paying off the (fee) is the conversion action. ... That's potentially powerful." In other announcements at a Seattle press event Wednesday night, T-Mobile said that current and future customers can now stream music for free from popular services Pandora, Rhapsody, Spotify, iHeartRadio, iTunes Radio and Slacker Radio ? with other music services to come. Customers may still pay those services for enhanced programming ? for $4.99 monthly Pandora subscribers get no ads and improved audio quality ? but T-Mobile won't count streamed music toward their data plan. Even if T-Mobile customers use up all their high-speed data ? and other services transition to lower-speed data ? their music stream will remain at high speed. "We are actually making it free to stream all the music you want on your smartphone from all your favorite streaming services," says T-Mobile Senior Vice President Andrew Sherrard. Half of smartphone owners listen to music on their device, according to eMarketer, which expects that to increase to 53% by 2018. T-Mobile's network has seen a six-fold increase in streamed music on its network over the past three years, Sherrard says. "Music is such a critical part of everybody's lives, and we don't think the traditional carriers have made it easy or really friendly in how they've set up their music services," he says. On Monday, T-Mobile and Rhapsody will provide a new ad-free unRadio music service to customers. T-Mobile's music strategy could drive other providers to set aside other popular apps from data caps, says Carrie MacGillivray, vice president for mobile services and Internet of Things coverage for research firm IDC. "They continue to disrupt the mobile services landscape with out-of-the-box thinking," she says. USA Today Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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