Samsung launches free mobile radio service Milk Music

DALLAS, March 7 (UPI) -- Samsung launched a free, ad-free radio streaming service for its U.S. customers Friday, but the service will be available only on their Galaxy line of phones.

The company plans to expand the service to other countries and other phone models at a later date. The service, which does not require log-in, will feature over 300 radio stations and give users access to over 13 million songs, as well as behaving like a digital jukebox, allowing users to customize stations and playlists, much like Spotify.

"The Milk application is available through the Google Play store, and will initially work with Samsung's Galaxy smartphones and tablets. The company is, however, thinking about expanding its use to competing mobile devices," said Daren Tsui, vice president of music at Samsung Media Solutions.

Milk is similar to iTunes Radio, which is available with ads for free and without ads for $24.99, and will attempt to team up with music starts to offer “unique music programming,” similar to what the Apple service does. The musical content is powered by Slacker music, which means that Samsung didn't have to license all the music, but at the same time is able to provide users a wider array of music choices.

Samsung will now compete with other free music streaming services like Pandora and Spotify, and the company will look to leverage the app to generate sales of its phones and tablets.

The design features a central dial, similar to the dials found on Apple's iPod Classic and Shuffle, which allows users to switch between nine genres of music by turning the dial.

[ComputerWorld] [TechCrunch]