When one music store on your handset just isn't enough, there's Vodafone. Evidently not at all content with just the Omnifone-provided unlimited service, the carrier has just revealed a more traditional outlet for buying music on one's phone. Vodafone Music comes pre-installed on Vodafone live! handsets and can be installed on a plethora of others. Put simply, the application enables users to search for songs right on their mobile and purchase them for playback -- nothing too complicated about that, right? Hit up the read link to see if your current cellie is compatible.

[Via UnwiredView]

First things first: open wide and ingest a mouthful of salt. Put away that bitter beer face and down it, we said! Okay, now that you're adequately skeptical, get a load of this. Word on the street has it that Nokia is currently working with Microsoft in order to integrate the Zune Marketplace into the former firm's handsets. No, there's no talk of a Zune Phone here -- no new hardware at all, actually. Instead, it seems the two could be figuring out a way to offer Zune Marketplace content on Nokia's prolific "non-smartphones." Make no mistake, Nokia sells quite a few low-end handsets, and if the Redmond powerhouse could get its material on 'em... well, we're pretty sure you see where this could go. Oh, and we're totally not buying this until N-Gage pops up on the Xbox 360.

[Via Electronista]

Even the best music phones aren't typically pegged as audiophile-friendly powerhouses -- and actually, they're still not going to be, but the infusion of a little Dolby tech into LG's lineup might grease things up a bit, anyway. LG has announced that it's the very first manufacturer to license Dolby's suite of audio processing products for the mobile world outside of Japan, a suite that includes surround sound, bass and high-frequency enhancement, volume leveling, graphic equalization by content type, and a magical mono-to-stereo converter -- nothing really revolutionary, but the Dolby name carries a lot of weight, and it'll be good to see phone makers consulting with some legit audio experts to help improve the experience. The first Dolby Mobile products from LG should reach the market in the fourth quarter of this year.

The thoroughly-discussed, briefly-available conduit betwixt the realms of RIM and Apple, BlackBerry Media Sync, is now available in a totally official capacity for your downloading pleasure. Owners of Pearls, Curves, and 8800s (and pretty much everything that's released out of Waterloo from here on out, we'd imagine, starting with the Bold) can now snag music and playlists right off iTunes, though DRM'd tracks are naturally off limits. Then again, aren't BlackBerry owners too busy having power lunches, signing contracts, picking out new suits, and generally being important to enjoy trivialities like music on the road?

[Via MobileSyrup]

At risk of getting delayed right into obscurity, Sony Ericsson looks like it's finally just about ready to release its long-announced PlayNow Arena mobile media store in a couple of European locales. SEMC Blog got the lowdown on screen shots of both the web-based and mobile versions of the Arena client, and we'll be honest, we're not really seeing what took so damn long. Okay, so we've got a unified portal for buying games, images, and music -- that's great and all, but not terribly unique, innovative, or interesting beyond the fact that many modern Sony Ericsson handsets should have tight integration with it out of the box. At least N-Gage can use the excuse that its fairly extensive community gaming aspect took some work to build out and get right; this, on the other hand, is little more than a glorified media store. Tell you what, though, guys: release a US-spec W980, and we'll cut you some slack the next time you delay a web portal by a few months. Honest.

The roll-out of LG's KM380 and KM710 models has already started, but the company has announced that it wants to take them to a whole pile of emerging markets by the third quarter. When all's said in done, it looks like customers throughout most of Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa will be able to snap them up locally, offering solid music control (just look at that big honkin' wheel on the KM710!), advanced equalization capabilities, and in the case of the KM380, a whopping 40 hours of continuous playback. Given the target markets, we'd expect the pricing to be pretty reasonable at every local launch, too.

[Via Unwired View]

Everyone knows that nobody buys a BlackBerry for its musical prowess, right? Au contraire, dearest email addict. RIM is currently working up a new application for BlackBerry smartphones that will "transfer your desktop iTunes music files" to your BB for those rare moments when you can actually kick back and enjoy the soothing sounds of Rogue Wave. Interestingly, we're not told whether BlackBerry Media Sync is being crafted specifically for the upcoming Bold, and we're also left to wonder when it'll actually be released. Patience is a virtue -- at least that's the word heard through the grapevine.

[Via CNET]

Thank you, LG, thank you for getting it. A music phone should have a 3.5mm headphone jack -- no exceptions -- and the new KM380 destined for the Chinese market has exactly that, not to mention a clever set of external controls on the outside of the flip dedicated to tune control. Failing to bring something like this onto the low end of your American or European offerings is pretty weak, but maybe this marks the beginning of a new chapter for you -- a "Golden Age" of music phones. Or maybe not. We can hope.

[Via Slashphone]

Okay, so maybe the execs out there in Finland have their ducks in a row after all. After rumors spread that Nokia was going to be taking a financial beating if consumers really took to its forthcoming all-you-can-eat Comes with Music service (a strange gamble, to be sure), the head of its music division is hitting back, saying that they "expect to make money both from [their] traditional device sales, as well as from the 'Comes With Music' service." Of course, "expect to make money" is a long way from actually "making money" in many cases -- and Nokia still has no official comment on how its Comes with Music label deals are structured -- so we guess we won't really know how this all went down until a few more quarters of earnings calls down the road.

[Thanks, Janne]

The latest round of rumors regarding the goings-on behind the scenes of Nokia's lofty Comes with Music paint a bleak picture for profitability -- but even scarier, they suggest that the company could be simply blown out if the initiative takes off. The problem stems from the claim that Nokia's deals with labels represent a huge gamble: that buyers of Comes with Music-compatible phones won't download more than a certain number of songs, believed to be 35. Above that, Espoo's no longer covered by a flat fee and pays the wholesale per-song rate for its customers' indiscretions. Clearly, either the rumor's wrong or Nokia seems to be betting against its own success here -- but the recent departure of a key exec involved with Comes with Music lends some credence to the latter. Maybe we don't speak for everyone here, but if we're paying a premium on our phone to earn a full year of all-you-can-eat tracks, you'd best believe we're taking full advantage.

[Via mocoNews]

Six months is an eternity by mobile standards; BenQ apparently knows that, already showing its C30 the door in favor of the C36. The new model carries over most of the C30's design cues but upgrades the VGA cam to 1.3 megapixels and swaps out the 1.8-inch 160 x 128 display for a moderately more generous 2-inch 220 x 176 one. Music is the real name of the game here, though, with dedicated controls atop the device, stereo speakers, and microSD expansion -- all of which will come in handy, we think, as you're waiting eons for web pages to load on the archaic GPRS radio. Look for it to launch in Indonesia this month with other countries following on shortly.

[Via Slashphone]

Trust us, this isn't the first time LocaModa's dabbled in the cellphone-controlled gadgetry game, but it's never been more friendly than it's being with the Social Jukebox. The aforesaid company has teamed up with TouchTunes in order to give patrons the ability to interact with flat-panels on TouchTunes jukeboxes. On-screen applications will include information about the song currently playing, elusive "user generated content" and even "patron photos" from their social networking profiles (scary?). For those completely absorbed in this stuff, you can even keep tabs on the interactions via data feeds from your favorite network. Twitter fights over which song ushers the drinking crowd out in a bar 1,500 miles away? What is the world coming to?

[Via textually, image courtesy of LocaModa]

It looks like we all missed this little gem tucked away in the Nokia XpressMusic 5610's FCC filing when it went public last month. Yep, your eyes aren't deceiving you -- you're looking at a T-Mobile logo front and center there. Only problem is, we can't figure out which T-Mobile they're referring to. Our gut tells us it's probably the US one that we all know and love, seeing how they carry the 5300 presently, and the particular flavor of the 5610 bearing T-Mob's credentials is a straight 2.5G piece across four bands. That's right, no 1700 or 2100MHz 3G here, and seeing how European carriers like 2.5G handsets like they like pokes in the eye with a sharp stick, that pretty much settles it. Cool how we've just decided it's gotta be T-Mobile USA in the post, isn't it? No word on a release on T-Mobile divisions on either side of the Atlantic at this point, though, so we'll keep our ear to the ground.

[Via CellPhoneSignal, thanks Marco]

Among the items on the miles-long list of things made better (or at least more interesting) with a capacitive touchscreen, virtual vinyl scratching and beat juggling has to be somewhere on there. Physical records have a certain sexiness that'll carry on for many years to come, but you've gotta admit that there's an appeal to whipping out a couple iPhones (or iPod touches, if that's how you roll), plugging them in, and having an instant set of turntables at your disposal. We're not quite there yet, but MixMeister has taken the first step with a rudimentary scratch app that comes with a set of funky fresh samples and will also work with any music already loaded on your device. It's not released yet, but it looks like when it is, it'll work with all firmware versions -- jailbroken ones, we presume. Follow the break for a video demo.

[Thanks, Chris]

For BlackBerry users feeling a bit left out of the mobile music store revolution, take heart, as Puretracks is running to the rescue. Utilizing the spotlight at SXSW in Texas, the aforementioned outfit is showcasing its newly developed, DRM-free music store and service for the BlackBerry platform. Reportedly, the system was crafted with partner Magnet Mobile Media, and it's slated to function on the Pearl, Curve and 8800 series mobiles. As of now, we've no idea how much the tunes will cost, but we do know that they'll be compressed AAC / AAC+ files and will be available in the US on April 1. As for future plans, the firm hopes to bring the service to Canada and "other markets," and best of all, it's even looking to "include support for WiFi capable handsets."

[Via mocoNews]