Helio today becomes the latest carrier to enter the lucrative fray of mobile music sales, rolling out its "Helio Music" platform to a customer base revealed to rock a monthly ARPU (average revenue per user) in excess of $100 -- not a bad target demographic, if we do say so ourselves. The scrappy MVNO, which expects that very target demographic to hit 100,000 subscribers some time in Q2 after launching last May, will offer music downloads direct to user's handsets for $1.99 a pop -- or, more intriguingly, to desktops via a PC client available this spring for 99 cents, at which point the songs can be loaded back to the handset via USB at no additional charge. Helio is promising an unusually user-friendly interface and a far wider selection than other carriers have managed to offer thus far, signing on Universal, Warner, Sony BMG, and EMI to bring "thousands of well-known artists" to Drifts across the land. Speaking of the Drift, it'll be the first device to support Helio Music; no word on whether Helio's older handsets will be supported in the future, but with the Drift's stereo Bluetooth support, we're thinking it's the way to rock anyway. Follow the break for Helio's press release.

Now that the LG Chocolate has finally launched, Verizon has apparently figured out that charging $15/month for the privilege of visiting the V CAST Music store is probably not such a bright idea. In what appears to be an intentional simultaneous release with the Chocolate phone, V CAST Music is now free to browse -- sure to delight 2-inch-window shoppers everywhere. The monthly fee previously required to access the V CAST VPak, which allowed you to shop for tunes on your mobile, has been nixed. Now anyone with a "V CAST Music-enabled" device can download tracks to their cellphone at the current rate of $1.99/song (or $0.99 if downloaded to a Windows XP-based PC). The $1.99 downloads contain two songs: one for the phone and one for the PC, but songs downloaded directly to the PC can be transferred to the mobile free of charge (Verizon, making things easy?). While it might seem a tad ridiculous that such a fee was charged in the past, at least Verizon is headed in the right direction here, and who wouldn't be excited about having to "only" pay $1.99 for a single?

[Via Mobiledia]