iTunes music store.. will they ever make it so you can access via 3G?

[OrlandoTragic]

Why does it HAVE to be over Wifi?

Several times I have been on car trips with different people, and we hear a track we like, and I wanna buy it so we can listen to it again, but I can't just buy it over the air...

Any particular reason for this?

Thanks =)

 

[Tallest Skil]

Any reason? The Phone Borg doesn't want you taking up their bandwidth and putting them out of business with your unlimited data.

 

[TEG]

Licensing with the record labels. They will not activate it until all songs are available through it.

TEG

 

[OrlandoTragic]

Any reason? The Phone Borg doesn't want you taking up their bandwidth and putting them out of business with your unlimited data.

What? The only time I'd be using the data is if I were to purchase a track.
Its not like you can stream full length tracks on iTunes anyway.

I figured it was a licensing thing. =(

 

[SilentPanda]

I don't particularly buy the "takes too much bandwidth" reason since you can get App Store applications <10 meg over 3G/Edge.

 

[kornyboy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

I think we will see it sometime in the future. When is the question? It may be several years down the road still. I also think it is a bandwidth thing.

 

[ratbatblue]

Are you kidding?? They have to make 3G WORK RIGHT everywhere, first. Once that little detail has been seen to, I'd love that ability, myself.

 

[gr8gonzo]

i think its a bandwith thing, cuz there are only 1000 apps, but there are millions of songs and youre more likely to purchase a .99 song rather than a $5 app

 

[ryanwarsaw]

It will never happen. If it did you might actually make a dent in your 'unlimited' data plan.

 

[cellocello]

Licensing with the record labels. They will not activate it until all songs are available through it.

I've heard this before.

Not sure if it's true or not - but it sounds like something the RIAA would do.

 

[mkrishnan]

I don't particularly buy the "takes too much bandwidth" reason since you can get App Store applications <10 meg over 3G/Edge.

Likewise, I use iTunes on the heavy side, and that means maybe 10-15 songs a month. So that's... maybe 40-50 MB. Meh, small fraction of my monthly downloading. I've used some 3.1GB down (EDGE) in ... about six months. If I even doubled my data services consumption by downloading songs on iTS, that would be another 500 MB / mo. How many users does Apple have spending the requisite $100-150 on music each month to hit that kind of bandwidth, that AT&T or any other service provider would really care about this?

 

[OrlandoTragic]

What about apps like Pandora, in terms of streaming?? That takes up quite a bit of bandwidth...

 

[Uh Clem]

Licensing with the record labels. They will not activate it until all songs are available through it.
TEG

Yep, it's a licensing issue. It doesn't have anything to do with bandwidth.

My understanding is that some existing contracts between Apple and recording studios do not explicitly allow content distribution via cellular networks. The recording studios want more money for that but Apple doesn't want to pay more (and charge you more) if you decide to buy a song via EDGE/3G.