Dallas – Samsung
launched its long-awaited
service for mobile devices, making it available initially on its flagship
Galaxy S III smartphone.
The free version,
called Music Hub Store, lets users buy albums and millions of tracks from all
four major labels and select independents. Users can also listen to 30-second
previews. Purchased songs can be stored in the Cloud for downloading and for streaming
to multiple registered Music Hub devices.
Music Hub Premium,
at $9.99 per month with free 30-day trial, is promoted as a three-in-one music
service that lets consumers upload personal music collections to the Cloud,
stream or purchase songs from the Music Hub catalog, and listen to personalized
radio. First-time users also get a free album.
With the premium
service, a Scan & Match Cloud Locker lets users upload their music
collections to the Cloud for playback on any device registered with a Music Hub
account. Music Hub uses scan-and-match technology to reduce upload times. Any
unmatched songs are directly uploaded from a user’s library to the Cloud. A
total of 100GB of storage is available for unmatched songs.
The premium
service also lets users stream, not just purchase, millions of songs from the
Music Hub catalog with unlimited plays and no advertisements.
Users can also
create personal radio stations based on favorite songs and artists or browse
stations by genre. Users also can tag songs they like to find and play back
later.
The premium
service also automatically updates playlists and purchased music across all
registered devices, and it offers customized recommendations to discover new
songs, artists, albums and radio stations.
Music Hub is based
on services delivered by mSpot, a content provider recently acquired by Samsung.
Samsung originally
for a Music Hub service in September 2010, when it announced
plans for its Samsung Media Hub, which offers movie and TV-show downloads for
purchase and rent to Samsung’s mobile devices. Media Hub has been available for
more than a year.
