3 ms·

But it still is only for "music streaming", not for any other bits I might want to use on my mobile device (augmented reality, maps, video, games....)

by judk 12y ago

mikestew 12y ago
I don't understand your complaint. Is it that not everything you might possibly want to download or stream is covered? Are you looking at this not as an added bonus, but less than you expected when you initially signed up with T-Mobile? As I understand it, you can use whatever you want on your phone and that hasn't changed one lick since the announcement.
- x0054 12y ago
  I was really split on the issue. On one side it's a good thing, and a really cool thing for the t-mobile customers. However, this is a bad thing for progress. Here is why: 1. Music is a pusher, it get's people to buy bigger data plans, it gets companies to provide bigger data plans. No that music is unlimited on T-Mobile, it's less likely that we are going to see cheeper data plans. Instead, it's just going to be unlimited music, and same old data plan for everything else. 2. Forget about discriminating one company over another. What about discriminating one type of content over another. What makes music better then spoken word podcasts, or online video, or netflix. You have to remember, nothing in this life is free. By promoting music content, t-mobile is necessarily demoting other types of content.
eli 12y ago
Worse, only for approved music streaming. Let's say I'm a mobile-focused music streaming startup. How will I convince people to switch to me when Spotify lets them stream without it counting against their data cap but my service can't offer that. T-Mobile hasn't added support for Google Play or Xbox Music or last.fm or Rdio. I think it will be a very (very) long time before extend it to the scrappy startups. It's effectively a gift to incumbent streaming services and a barrier to entry for newcomers.

But it still is only for "music streaming", not for any other bits I might want to use on my mobile device (augmented reality, maps, video, games....)

by judk 12y ago

But it still is only for "music streaming", not for any other bits I might want to use on my mobile device (augmented reality, maps, video, games....)

mikestew 12y ago

I don't understand your complaint. Is it that not everything you might possibly want to download or stream is covered? Are you looking at this not as an added bonus, but less than you expected when you initially signed up with T-Mobile? As I understand it, you can use whatever you want on your phone and that hasn't changed one lick since the announcement.

x0054 12y ago
I was really split on the issue. On one side it's a good thing, and a really cool thing for the t-mobile customers. However, this is a bad thing for progress. Here is why: 1. Music is a pusher, it get's people to buy bigger data plans, it gets companies to provide bigger data plans. No that music is unlimited on T-Mobile, it's less likely that we are going to see cheeper data plans. Instead, it's just going to be unlimited music, and same old data plan for everything else. 2. Forget about discriminating one company over another. What about discriminating one type of content over another. What makes music better then spoken word podcasts, or online video, or netflix. You have to remember, nothing in this life is free. By promoting music content, t-mobile is necessarily demoting other types of content.

eli 12y ago

Worse, only for approved music streaming. Let's say I'm a mobile-focused music streaming startup. How will I convince people to switch to me when Spotify lets them stream without it counting against their data cap but my service can't offer that. T-Mobile hasn't added support for Google Play or Xbox Music or last.fm or Rdio. I think it will be a very (very) long time before extend it to the scrappy startups. It's effectively a gift to incumbent streaming services and a barrier to entry for newcomers.