Want free songs? Get AMPed

SINGAPORE, our iTunes moment may have arrived.

TNP PICTURE: MOHD ISHAK

We finally have SingTel's AMPed service.

It joins other music-on-your-mobile services like Nokia's Comes With Music and Sony Ericsson's PlayNow Plus.

But it is arguably the most promising replacement for a full-featured iTunes store that seems unlikely to reach our shores anytime soon.

Like PlayNow Plus and Comes With Music, AMPed has the very attractive proposition of letting users download songs for free.

But it holds only 500,000 songs, compared to Comes With Music (4 million) and PlayNow Plus (3.5 million).

You can access AMPed on your phone or on the web, as long as you are on one of SingTel's three 3G Flexi plans, or you've signed up for their $9.90 BroadBand on Mobile service on top of your existing plan.

You can download as many songs as you want. But SingTel allows you to permanently keep only 15 songs each month. The rest will automatically be made inactive. If you don't use all 15 credits, they will be rolled over to the next month.

A point to note here: The music is not in MP3 format, but in copy-protected Windows Media Audio format. It means you can play these songs only on a Windows media player.

Interactive space

Getting started with AMPed is a slight hassle.

Since it's meant as an interactive space for music fans, it's essential that you login from a computer and create your profile.

Once you've done that, you're all ready to browse music on your AMPed-ready phone.

The AMPed application, which takes just a few seconds to load, brings you a homepage with highlights of the day's top downloads and featured artists.

Downloading is a breeze and, at SingTel's 3G speeds, not too much of a hassle. Songs can be browsed by recommendations, artist, albums, genres and shared playlists. When you've made your selection, the song downloads in the background, while you continue to browse the store.

As part of its interactivity, SingTel allows users to keep and update profile pages, Facebook-style, with your current mood.

But at this stage, the interactive functions are mostly confined to the web portal. You can't create, edit and share playlists on your phone.

Another gripe is that, unlike iTunes, you can't download a whole album in one click. Songs must be downloaded individually, which can be frustrating.

But clearly, AMPed is not just a music download service. It integrates interactivity with music news and, as 2,000 lucky fans experienced last month with pop sensation Lady Gaga, opportunities to meet up with their favourite artistes.

I was particularly impressed with how the service responded to Michael Jackson's death.

They created a tribute playlist with old favourites like Ben, I Want You Back and I'll Be There - all ready to be downloaded into phones.

But this is also where AMPed showed its limitations.

Where was Thriller? Billie Jean? Or the rest of Jackson's later hits?

SingTel currently has only one music partner, Universal Music Group, which doesn't own the rights to Jackson's later works, which are on Sony's Epic Records.

With AMPed, there are no additional data charges for either browsing the store or downloading songs on the phone, unlike Nokia's and Sony Ericsson's services.

While AMPed is currently available to 11 handsets from Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung, the telco is working to get the service as an application to more brands and models.

Enjoying Nokia's Comes With Music plan essentially means upgrading to a Nokia phone every year. Even then, only certain models come packed with the service. PlayNow Plus comes only with the W705 phone.

Once SingTel gets its music partnerships in place and the service is extended to more phones, who needs iTunes?

Great Singapore Sale

Simply MAGIC

Korean actresses, Japanese magicians and local personalities show up at Sony Ericsson handphone launch

IN A community where Transformers and Skynet are spoken of as if they're friends of ours, an invitation to meet W995 and C903 is certain not to raise an eyebrow.

In fact, skirts yes, eyebrows, no, but less of that later.

Sony Ericsson, those clever people whose little green ball of a logo has practically replaced the heart icon for 'love', had a big bash to launch their latest phones.

Typically, the Japanese love to give their techie items two-syllable cutesy handles - in this instance, Satio, Aino, Yari. You don't anyhow SAY!

For the majority of Singaporeans, who can be accused of being a nano robotic, W995 and C903 work better on our wallets.

And so a few hundred people, fans, regional media, trade partners and well-placed personalities assembled in Red Dot - the building on Maxwell Road that looks like a ginormous ang koo kueh - for the event. Talk about being shunted from pillar to post.

There were time tags (for when you could view W and C and their numbers up close) and press passes and waiting under this and that tentage while catering crew tried to serve nibbles on trays right in the carpark.

The carpark was turned into a sports arena of sorts, where a team of Frenchmen on amazing pogosticks for legs bounced and leapt and hooped the hoop. Here is where you don't make jokes about leap-frogging, kodok.

Meanwhile, in the lobby of the Red Dot Museum, name guests were striking poses (this is the raised skirts part). Then suddenly we were herded into a dark enclosed space of white noise and red lights and blue cordons.

I used to buy my phones off brand booths pitched up outside Orchard Road malls, but this 'roadshow sales style' has the advantage, if you have time.

The time to check out the addresses from the Sony Ericsson bosses, models parading the new phones, the appearance of a Korean actress Miss Lee Min Jung, and the spellbinding performance by Cyril- no-surname, quite the coolest-looking cyber-magician this side of the Pacific.

Magical

The dude is California-born, to a Japanese father and French-Moroccan mother and an illusionist of the highest order. Judge that yourself when his show debuts on AXN later this year.

And now a bit about the phone. It's entertainment unlimited to give you 100 games to play, 300 music videos to vibrate to, and 50 blockbuster movies to watch, from Angels And Demons to a film titled Quarantine.

Quarantine, aarrgh, delete that word!