Peter Kafka

Recent Posts by Peter Kafka

Thumbplay’s Mobile Music Service Hits the iPhone

Another paid option for mobile music: Thumbplay, which offers an all-you-can-eat subscription service that already works on Research in Motion’s (RIMM) BlackBerry and Google’s (GOOG) Android handsets, has rolled out a version that works with Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone.

Same terms and conditions apply: You can stream all the music you want to your phone for $9.95 and buy individual songs for downloading. That $9.95 price tag seems to be the new going rate for mobile subscription services: Rhapsody recently priced its offering at that level, and MOG will do the same once its mobile option rolls out.

One relatively important distinction between Thumbplay’s BlackBerry option and the one it offers for Android and iPhone: The former offers an offline/caching mode, which means you can stream a certain number of tunes, store them on your handset, and listen to them when you’re on an plane, in the subway, etc.

Thumbplay doesn’t explain why that option isn’t available for Android and iPhone, but promises it’s “coming soon.”

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The problem with the Billionaire Savior phase of the newspaper collapse has always been that billionaires don’t tend to like the kind of authority-questioning journalism that upsets the status quo.

— Ryan Chittum, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review about the promise of Pierre Omidyar’s new media venture with Glenn Greenwald