Mercora's "M" streams CD quality music to your Windows Mobile 5 phone

I haven't tested it yet, but this announcement (PDF) from Mercora sounds intriguing. Today at DEMO, the company will introduce their "M" service that will wirelessly stream digital music to any Windows Mobile 5 Smartphone or Pocket PC Phone Edition device. Some of the announced features are:

• Over-the-air access to music library* : Wireless access to their entire digital music library, transforming the device into an always-on, always-synced wireless music player.
• Socially networked listening* (coming soon): The ability to wirelessly access and listen to the music collections of up to five friends and family members.
• Access to the largest mobile radio service: More than 100,000 commercial-free, dynamically programmed channels that are searchable by artist or genre. Genres include Alternative, Classical, Hip Hop, Jazz, Pop, and Rock as well as highly-customized subgenres such as 1920’s Blues, Arena Rock, Bhangra, British Folk-Rock, Contemporary Flamenco, Italian Pop, New York Underground Rap, and Political Reggae, and Rai.
• Brilliant high-fidelity sound: CD-quality sound through the implementation of a highly-optimized version of Ogg/Vorbis, an open source media encoder that provides brilliant sounding audio over even the most congested 3G networks.
• Stereo Bluetooth support: Wired and wireless headphone support via Bluetooth; stereo Bluetooth A2DP profiles allow for simple integration with supported in-car, in-house and wireless headsets.

The service costs $4.99 a month; you can subscribe at $29.99 for 6 months, $49.99 for a full year or $99.99 for two years. There is a free preview trial starting today and running through October 31st. Hit this link to download the application and you can try the service for free! Folks will be happy to know that the service is not limited to just the U.S.; there are several supported countries and devices.

Update: working as advertised on my XV 6700. The navigation menu is a little "bare-bones", but the sound quality over wired headphones is excellent. You'll need an unlimited data plan to support this service for sure. I don't have stereo Bluetooth headphones, so if some can test the A2DP support and comment, that would be great! First impressions: very slick service leveraging your data plan; sounds great!

Comments

[Keith]

Seems like using Orb would be a better solution, with only the radio stations and use of Ogg/Vorbis being new features.

[Bill]

The continuous play on Mercora is way better than Orb for windows mobile 5.0...without a doubt. I have tried both. Mercora is way easier to use. I definitely like the menu style, it's like an ipod menu. Orb is way too difficult to use, especially with the buttons being so small for someone using a pocket pc phone. Mercora all the way even though you have to pay.