T-Mobile announced today an expansion of its ‘Music Freedom’ program by adding 14 more streaming services to its list, therefore more than doubling the current number of providers in the program . According to GeekWire, the reason behind this expansion would be diverting the “potential criticism over giving preferential treatment to music providers”. CEO of T-Mobile, John Legere, explains: “Music Freedom is pro-consumer, pro-music and pure Un-carrier and today we’re taking another huge step toward our ultimate goal of including every streaming music service in the program. Anyone can play. No one pays. And everyone wins.”
T-Mobile initiated the “Music Freedom” program in June this year, TheNextWeb says, with the purpose of allowing its users to listen to an unlimited amount of music from the most popular streaming services without applying extra charges on their data plan. “Not only is Music Freedom available for T-Mobile customers at no extra charge, it’s also completely free for music streaming providers. No backroom deals. No paid prioritization.”, the company said.
The initial Music Freedom list included Rhapsody, Pandora, AccuRadio, Black Planet, Grooveshark, iHeartRadio, iTunes Radio, Samsung Milk Music, Radio Paradise, Rdio, Slacker, Songza and Spotify. From T-Mobile’s press release, these are the newly added services:
- Google Play Music− Winner of the popular vote among Un-carrier customers
- Xbox Music − ‘All the Music You Love’ on all your devices
- SoundCloud − Provides access to the world’s largest community of music & audio creators
- RadioTunes − Features a wide variety of free streaming radio channels
- Digitally Imported − The first service in Music Freedom devoted entirely to electronic dance music
- Fit Radio − A wide selection of great workout songs for the gym
- Fresca Radio − Delivers 40 channels of the best Latin, Hispanic and Caribbean music
- JAZZRADIO − Enjoy endless hours of the best jazz music around
- Live365 − Thousands of internet radio stations featuring music in every style
- Mad Genius Radio − For those who like a lot of music and who like their playlists fresh
- radioPup − Featuring 300+ local radio stations streaming the best music available
- radio.com − Original programming including streaming music and more
- ROCKRADIO − 100% rock, streaming the most diverse variety of rock music online
- Saavn − All the best Bollywood and Indian music, online and on the go
This move has proven to be a hit with consumers, according to TheVerge. Since the release of ‘Music freedom’, the number of T-Mobile customers streaming music each day has increased with almost 300%, and they’re streaming 66 million songs per day on T-Mobile’s Data Strong™ network. This Music Freedom program has also become a major reason for consumers to switch to T-Mobile. In a recent survey of U.S. wireless users, 1 in 4 said that Music Freedom alone is a key reason they’ve switched or would switch to T-Mobile.