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Abhinav Ramnarayan

Chennai , May 14

Will music on cellphones break the iPod market's back? Two weeks back Nokia released the N91, which it termed the `iPod killer', with mp3 storage and playback features.

Now Hutch has introduced paid full song downloads for music-enabled handsets. The service is releasing on May 15.

Mr Naveen Chopra, Chief Marketing Officer, Hutchison Essar, said that Hutch would work with several content providers such as Hungama Mobile and Mauj Telecom as well as the music industry as a whole to offer music to the customer.

Compatible with Nokia

The songs, available in the AAC+ format and played on the company's in-house software developed in conjunction with Siemens, would initially be compatible with nine Nokia handsets only.

"Currently, the software is only compatible with phones operating on the Symbian mobile operating system but the company will get it working on Java-enabled handsets shortly."

More than five lakh Hutch customers use the nine models of Nokia, said a release.

The service will be available to Hutch post-paid and pre-paid customers across all circles, except Maharashtra and Goa, and Tamil Nadu and Kerala, as these networks are not fully enabled on GPRS, he said.

To avoid illegal file transfer and sharing, the songs are DRM-protected, which means that the song once downloaded would be locked to your mobile number.

"The customer will not be able to send it to another phone using Bluetooth; it won't work even if you take the memory chip out and put it in another phone."

Mr Chopra said that the service will be boosted by Hutch's new GPRS scheme, in which the company will do away with the monthly rental for GPRS Internet on mobile for post-paid customers. The `you-use-you-pay' scheme would open up the GPRS market, Mr Chopra said.

The first full song download made available is the music premiere of the forthcoming Bollywood flick, Krrish, offered by Hutch in conjunction with mobile content provider Hungama Mobile, film production company Filmkraft, and T-Series. The songs would be priced starting at Rs 20 each.

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