We suppose the third time's a charm. AT&T and Napster have quite the history of offering up lackluster deals to customers -- first with that $14.95 Napster To Go scam on Cingular, then the free Napster To Go on AT&T -- but they're finally doing it up right and offering wireless downloads from Napster's 5 million strong catalog to AT&T's music-starved subscribers. Right now your options with the carrier are eMusic for some spendy wireless downloads, or the iPhone. Unfortunately, while Napster bests eMusic on selection, the price remains the same at $7.49 per five songs, and these ain't no DRM-free affair like eMusic. The Napster service will also allow for $1.99 a la carte purchases, something eMusic lacks, and with every purchase you receive an email on your PC to help you download a copy of the track. Verizon and Sprint have quite the jump on AT&T when it comes to over-the-air music downloads, but we'll see if AT&T can start to gain some ground starting early next month when the service launches. Oh, and before you ask: no, Napster won't work on the iPhone.

Try as they might, over-the-air music downloading services have generally been received with tepid responses from many wireless subscribers. That may change in Japan soon, as wireless carrier NTT DoCoMo will be offering the "Napster To Go" wireless music downloading service. While this sounds uneventful, the awesome detail here is that for a flat monthly fee (¥1,980, or about $16.70), NTT DoCoMo customers can access a wireless on-demand download library of over 300,000 tunes -- and download said tunes to their heart's content (the PC music download service from Napster features about 3,000,000 titles by comparison). Although NTT DoCoMo customers will see a 300,000-strong library of 3GPP-encoded titles, but we're not sure if file expiration or anything as heinous as that will be in effect here. Let's hope not.

AT&T and Napster have joined hands to offer customers access to some three million songs for a year via Napster To Go. This 180 dollar freebie -- if, of course, you have the right plan -- will allow subscribers to download, organize, and create playlists on a PC and then sync them to their handset or compatible music device. This offer is a bit of a rehash from back in November 2004 when Cingular owned AT&T, but this time instead of 14.95 a month, it's free (and we love free). Reading through the list of qualifying plans is a bit of a daunting affair, so our advice is to hit up your local bricks and mortar AT&T shop on or after the April 1st launch for the lowdown.

Think Napster isn't serious about being big in Japan? Well check this from the former P2P darling. No, it's not tradeshow shwag -- it's microSD storage (and USB cable, a couple of adapters, and Napster logo stickers) that will cost ya a big fat ¥10,000 (about $82) premium for the privilege of advertising their service on Hagiwara Sys-Com's 1GB card, or ¥5,000 ($41) for the 512MB model. Apparently, Napster won't be pulling punches in support of their recently launched direct-to-mobile download service with NTT DoCoMo. The new cards and adapters allow select handsets from the FOMA 902i and new 903i series of devices to get in on Napster to Go which requires a microSD card for syncing. Of course, any microSD card will work but why cloud the issue with facts? Still, having recently boosted revenue guidance for the quarter, perhaps Napster just like Big in Japan has to exit their home turf to get super... once again.

[Via Impress]

Just as those of us stateside are getting our initial glimpse into music download service like SYNC and Vcast, NTT DoCoMo and Napster are expanding their mobile music offerings to all 52 million mobile customers. For a nominal $3.00 a month service fee, customers receive 300 (yes that's right) credits towards full length tracks and ring tones that are available via over the air downloading and always have the ability to purchases more credits if need be. With fourteen devices being supported off the bat there is no doubt that the Japanese are in a downloading frenzy.

Well, it looks like that WSJ rumor we ran yesterday was pretty much spot on. Cingular is indeed launching a music service today, and we must say the scope of their undertaking is quite impressive: integration with three separate music stores, along with supplemental content aplenty. For starters, a Cingular Music phone can work with Napster to add subscription tracks from your computer with a $15 a month Napster To Go account, and you can also access the new Napster Mobile, which allows 30 second previews and song purchases, but it looks like the songs are only downloaded to your PC, and will be transferred to your phone later. The good news is that those tracks only cost $0.99, quite a bargain compared to most current mobile services, but of course you're not paying for those hefty data charges, and you're not getting the track right when you want it. The Yahoo! Music offering is quite similar to that of Napster, with $12 a month buying unlimited subscription track usage, but phone-based song purchases still being downloaded to the PC, for syncing with your phone later. There doesn't seem to be much of a mobile slant to eMusic's DRM-free MP3 offerings, just added integration with Cingular, and 50 free tracks with the purchase of a W810i or W300i. A free 60-day trial of Napster is also available to Cingular customers. Cingular says all of this music store integration is "allowing consumers to extend their existing music libraries not rebuild them," but the lack of mobile song purchasing straight to a handset seems to sort of miss the point. But wait, there's more! Cingular is also announcing 25 channels of XM radio for $9 a month, that MusicID song identification service we mentioned yesterday, Music Videos, and all sorts streaming music and music related content. Cingular music will be supported by the upcoming Cingular SYNC (Samsung A707), along with the LG CU500, Cingular 3125 and those two Sony Ericssons we already told you about. All this should be going down November 6-ish.

According to The Wall Street Journal, those in the know are predicting Cingular to announce a music service for its cellphone network as early as tomorrow. It seems that despite rampant rumoring of an iPhone and related wireless iTunes service, Cingular is taking things into its own hands -- with a little help from Napster, Yahoo and eMusic. Initially the service will just involve rolling out PlaysForSure functionality to handsets so that they can play subscription tracks from the major non-Apple music services, but Cingular is also planning a wireless music store with pay-per-track and all-you-can-eat offerings. The phones will also purportedly feature Cingular's "Music ID" tech that will allow a user to hold the phone up to a speaker and have the song playing automatically matched with the Napster database and available for purchase. Of course, there's enough room in the world for more than one music service, and right now it appears Cingular is fine with squeezing both Apple and the PFS onto its network. The word is that (as rumored) Apple and Cingular have signed a deal to co-develop an iPhone, and the same article predicts a January launch at the Macworld Expo. Apple also has recently been awarded a phone-related speech recognition system that adds even more fuel to the fire. Being the seasoned iPhone rumor-mongers we are, we'll take all of these reports with a few grains of salt and sit back to see what actually happens.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read - Cingular to announce music service [Thanks, Maurice]
Read - Apple and Cingular forge iPhone deal [Thanks, Ben]