Jamba is promoting its music service at the radio show Internationalen Funkausstellung in Berlin (IFA), where it will have a “bluetooth column” and give away Jamba content, such as ringtones, games and (I think) some full-track songs, and also allow people to interact in “mad” ways. This is all translated from German, possibly poorly.
However, Jamba has sent me an english translation of the pertinent details of its new music store, which is currently in beta but which is due to go live sometime in August…or perhaps the beta test will last until the end of August and then it will go live.
Anyway, the Jamba Music service sounds like a pretty good example of a mobile music service. Songs are available in both rental and purchase formats, and the two can be combined. The rental service is €14.95 per month for unlimited songs, or €4.99 per month for 20 songs. Songs are sold at €1.29 each, or whole albums for €12.95. I think this is a 30% premium over iTunes songs in Germany, which is roughly what analysts think people will pay for the mobility benefit (one euro is currently about US$1.27). People who buy tracks are also able to burn them (a limited number of times, I assume). This pricing doesn’t include data charges, and Jamba warns customers to have a good mobile data package if they use the service—or alternatively download the songs to the PC and sideload them to the phone.
Jamba claims that downloading a song to a mobile takes 10-15 seconds using progressive downloading via UMTS.
Jamba plans to launch with 500,000 tracks from a number of record companies, including Universal and SonyBMG, which will cover around three-quarters of the songs in the German charts. Jamba has also partnered with laut.de to provide artist’s biographies, album reviews and music news. Jamba has also partnered with Debitel which will soon begin offering the service under the name “debitel & Jamba Music”.