Sprint to Launch Service That Sells Song Downloads

As usual, the rumors have been flying around the Internet. Now the Wall Street Journal reports that Sprint Nextel will launch an over-the-air music-downloading service, which offers subscribers hundreds of thousands of songs at $2.50 a pop.

Mike Goodman at Yankee Group said if Sprint Nextel gets "a couple of thousand downloads in the next six months, I will be surprised. There is a market for mobile music, but I don't think there is a market for $2.50 downloads."

Sprint is the first U.S. carrier to offer OTA music downloads, and $2.50 for a full track notwithstanding, no one really knows if U.S. consumers even want to download songs directly to their handset. Japan's 20 million downloads since last December shouldn't be used as a gauge for the U.S., since a lot less people in Japan have PCs at home. Personally, I'll stick to 99 cents at iTunes and transfer songs to my handset...