Are 3 insane? How not to offer a music service...

I'm astounded, I really am.  Why?  Well, I've never needed to type the word astounded before... and er, the reason why...

Yesterday I mentioned that 3 in the UK have just launched an all-you-can-eat music service.  Looked okay if not a little bare-boned.  Today I stumped up 49p to try it for the day.  49p isn't a lot of money but even 1p would be too much for what is on offer!

The streaming audio is actually a video stream with audio.  The video stream consists of a few stills that change periodically.  The audio quality sounds like the kind of thing you get with streaming 3gp video - if not worse!  That kind of quality is okay if it's accompanying a weather forecast or news headlines... it's no good for a subscription music service.

Another way to describe it is... it sounds just like that call centre music you're forced to listen to when in a phone queue.  I'm really not kidding!

As I set this up on the Skypephone on PAYG (prepay) I wasn't able to choose the £5 a month option - which, as it turned out, was a lucky break.  As it's a video stream I'm unable to listen to it in the background and my stereo bluetooth headset will not work with it.  One last thing, a few BBC music stations are thrown in with it too but not on PAYG.

Much better value for money (and that's an understatement if ever there were one) is the mobile version of Social.FM.  Excellent sound quality, works in the background, amazingly vast selection of music.  The service works on Symbian S60, UIQ and Windows mobile - there's no java or BREW version... so no Skypephone support.  You will need a decent data plan and the service isn't free (although it is for the next couple of days)