Sprint Ups the M-Entertainment Ante

Sprint Nextel Corp. launched Sprint Radio and upgraded the Sprint Music Store this week.

The new Sprint Radio service is similar to a satellite radio offering. It has more than 50 channels of streaming radio and video covering music and music videos, as well as news, weather, sports, finance and entertainment from NPR, ESPN, Radio Disney and others. Radio channels include urban, pop, Latin, rock, reggaetone, country, dance, spiritual, jazz and others.

Sprint Radio costs $5.95 per month and requires the Sprint Media Player or a downloadable Java application. It works on certain handsets across the Sprint Power Vision, Sprint Vision and Nextel networks.

The service is enabled through a partnership with mSpot, which is responsible for content production and ongoing operations of the service.

The carrier also upgraded the Sprint Music Store, which became the first over-the-air song-download service available in the United States in October 2005 in partnership with Groove Mobile. The m-commerce site now provides Amazon.com-like personalized recommendations. A customer now can visit the "Recommendations" section under the main menu of the Music Store to see a list of songs and artists that may be of interest based the customer’s past purchases. Users also can select a song from the playlist to find out what other customers who bought that song also have purchased.

Other new features include the ability to:

• Listen to downloaded songs while shopping for others
• Press play, pause, skip, fast-forward and rewind on special external keys on select phones, including the FUSIC by LG
• Re-download a song once without a charge if the song was deleted accidentally
• Find music more easily with expanded charts and categories

A new promotion for the Sprint Music Store allows customers to buy two songs and get one free through Nov. 15.

"More people than ever before are enjoying music on their mobile phones, and this popularity is expected to continue to rise as Sprint offers more truly differentiated ways to be entertained no matter where our customers are throughout their busy days," said Alana Muller, director of entertainment product marketing for Sprint. "Sprint makes music easy -- not requiring any wires, extra devices or complex navigation. We allow our customers to get right to what they want while giving them what no one else can."

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