Cingular prepping mobile music service

Cingular Wireless is set to announce its mobile music strategy that takes a decidedly different approach to the market than rivals Sprint and Verizon. The carrier is adding digital rights management technology to select phones that will let users transfer (or sideload) tracks acquired from music subscription services like Napster, Yahoo Music and eMusic to the devices. It will be the first carrier to do so. Cingular says an additional over-the-air component will be available in the coming months, based on the ability of its music store partners to support the capability.

It makes a lot of sense for Cingular to partner with existing music services rather than trying to build a music service on its own. Of course, there is a risk that if any of these partners drops the ball, Cingular gets the blame. We'll be watching this one closely.

Get the full scoop:
- in the WSJ article (sub req'd)