U.S. software company Beatnik has announced a new music download system that it says compresses songs up to 10 times more than the MP3 format, allowing for faster downloads. Beatnik bills the service as able to deliver music services to mass-market, lower end phones over 2.5G networks.
"By enabling over-the-air full-track delivery to low cost phones we are more than doubling the addressable market for music services," said Jeremy Copp, chief sales officer at Beatnik, in a statement. "Until now only high-end smartphones and 3G networks could support full-track over-the-air music downloads which immediately disconnected the mass-market consumer from the content. Network operators and music content aggregators can now for the first time realize the potential of the mobile music market by delivering to the mass-market consumers most likely to purchase songs."
With the Beatnik Mobile Music Player, users are promised to experience the same high quality digital music playback as on high-end digital players. The company promises its "highly efficient" file format will increase storage space on phones, and enable much faster download speeds.
Beatnik founder, Thomas Dolby Robertson, said in a company statement, "The mobile music market has shown it has massive potential. Now the race is on to turn every consumer mobile phone into a personal music player. But people demand a high quality listening experience, an easy-to-use and intuitive user interface and immediate access to the widest range of music product. The Beatnik Mobile Music Player delivers these characteristics, along with a set of services that will ensure the rapid growth of full track music delivery to mobile phones."
The company says it is in talks with operators, handset manufacturers and content providers about adopting the system and expects to announce a partnership in a month.