Verizon Streamlines Its Music Service

Music phones, and the music services that help you fill your song library, are getting more and more attention. Although the Apple iPhone didn’t start the trend, AT&T’s biggest phone launch of the year certainly isn’t hurting the proliferation of music programs. Verizon Wireless announced a new PC-based software suite designed to make it easier to manage your music through Verizon’s VCAST Music service. The program, called Music Manager, is available for free at the Verizon Wireless website.

Music Manager, according to Verizon Wireless, will “make buying and organizing your music intuitive�, by presenting your music files in four simple categories: VCAST Buy Music, to purchase new songs; Music on My PC; Music on My Phone; and Music on My CD. Tranferring and ripping songs is a matter of dragging and dropping files.

In addition, Music Manager is designed to sync directly with Windows Media Player, and will handle the conversion from AAC to WMA automatically, if necessary.

As we speculated, the arrival of the iPhone and heavy promotion of its capabilities appear to be a positive development for the entire industry – and that includes consumers, who will certainly benefit from the competition and innovation in the “music phone� market.