Earlier today Eircom, Ireland’s largest ISP, launched its free music streaming service known as MusicHub. Eircom MusicHub allows free unlimited music streaming for existing Eircom broadband customers, and music downloads for as little as 32c per track.
For existing Eircom broadband customers MusicHub streaming is free, and subscription based track downloads cost €5.99 or €12.99 per month with 15 and 40 available downloads respectively. The service is also open to non-Eircom customers who can stream music on a subscription basis starting at €6.99 per month, and can download tracks for €11.99 or €22.99 per month, allowing 15 and 40 track downloads respectively.
Stephen Beynon, Group Managing Director of Consumer and Small Business, commented on the launch:
“MusicHub is a major development for eircom in the online content space. We are the first and only Internet provider in Ireland to offer online streaming as part of a music service. Customers will not find a greater selection of music across all genres anywhere else in Ireland from their broadband provider. It is the third significant market development this year from eircom, following the introduction of Next Generation Broadband and the launch of eMobile, and underlines how eircom offers unrivalled value to our customers.”
The service offers the usual expected features like searching and music discovery based on interests, music tagging, commenting, ability to recommend tracks, playlists, and interestingly a ‘radio’ feature to auto-generate playlists. Track streaming quality is very good at 128kbps. Unfortunately, streams are served using Adobe Flash so no iPad compatibility.
After using the service for the last hour I have to say that it’s quite impressive. The amount of tracks currently available is substantial, with the total number set to “grow to more than four million in the coming weeks”. It’s also important to note that all downloaded tracks are digital rights management (DRM) free so can be used across multiple devices.
Eircom MusicHub gets the thumbs up from The Sociable, what are your impressions?
