Orange Sprinkles Some Monkey Magic Over its PrePay Service

Orange UK has announced a new PrePay tariff that offers free music streamed to their mobile phone each time they top up their account. Aimed primarily at the youth market, the so-called "Monkey" tariff has been created with 16-24 year olds in mind tapping into the elements of teen and 'twenty somethings' lifestyle choices. As well as free music, Monkey offers customers free texts, allows for playlists to be shared on social networks, along with advertising from relevant brands direct to their mobile.

A dedicated Monkey website aims to create a community where customers can broadcast their individual playlists online and share them with their friends.

The operator has partnered with Universal Music for the content and the television broadcaster, Channel 4 who will promote the service on its music channels.

Jonathan Arber, IDC's Senior Research Analyst in Consumer Mobile noted though that the mobile portion of the service requires a voice call to listen to music, this means that the consumer may be unable to receive calls while using the service. Dialling the access number allows the user to listen to a number of preset playlists, making this little more than an interactive radio station.

He added that the PC portion of the service allows unlimited streaming, but again, it will inevitably be compared to services such as Spotify, which offer a far broader catalogue, and are available for free. However, Orange is attempting to differentiate with editorial content.

Posted to the site on 29th July 2009