CD-quality downloads arrive on Japanese mobile phones

October 15, 2004

Japanese people are always
first to enjoy new goodies and technologies it seems and once again they have
something new. KDDI, one of Japan's biggest phone outfits, is planning a service
that will allow people to download full-length songs to their mobile phones.
Nothing interesting there were it not for the quality of the songs. According to
KDDI the songs
will be of CD-quality, good enough to listed to on stereo
speakers.

Users can also use the tunes they download
as ring tones. Working with record labels, KDDI plans to allow users to
download each tune for several hundred yen and eventually expand the
database of songs.

In a press release a KDDI spokesman said that the company may be able
to offer songs for downloads before CDs are officially released.

The service, which begins next month, is called "Chaku Uta Full," or
"Full Ringer Songs."

Since December 2002, KDDI has offered a hugely popular "Chaku Uta"
service that allows mobile phone users to download parts of songs for ring
tones.

The original Chaku Uta service proved popular with more than 10 million
downloads per month.