Videotron has announced a new free Unlimited Music for its mobile subscribers, to allow them to stream Stingray, Rdio, Google Play, Deezer and Spotify without using their data plan. The announcement was made this morning at a press conference at the Phi Centre in Montreal.
Myrianne Collin, Senior Vice President, Strategy & Marketing of Videotron, said in a statement this new feature is “just the beginning” and with “This launch, a ground-breaker in Canada, reaffirms our commitment to offering the most innovative mobile service anywhere.”
Unlimited Music will be offered free of charge to subscribers on a Premium plan (an All-inclusive Canada plan with at least 2 GB of data; starts at $58.50 for BYOD) or an Internet + Mobile package with at least 1 GB of data.
The company also announced today their mobile customers will have access to exclusive Stingray channels, through a new customized app made for Videotron customers.
Other music services coming soon include Songza, while the company notes “other popular services” will soon be added as well.
Earlier this year, the CRTC banned wireless carriers from subsidizing data for mobile TV apps, singling out offerings from Videotron and Bell. It is unclear if subsidizing music data falls into that same category, of offering “undue preferences or advantages” as CRTC chairman Jean-Pierre Blais called it.
We reached out to Videotron and inquired if Apple Music would be supported anytime in the future, and a representative responded via email they’re in talks with Apple. So this is a good sign for iOS users.
Let us know if you’re going to be using Videotron’s new Unlimited Music service with your existing music streaming apps.
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Is this not against the CRTC regulations and Net Neutrality? Offering services that do not deduct from the buckets? Or is there something I’m missing here?
Perhaps it is because no service belongs to Videotron and they are aggregating the music services into one place?
This is a good question and it’ll be interesting to see how the CRTC responds to this. Videotron was already told to stop subsidizing mobile TV data with Bell, but surely you know they have thought about this already.
Yeah, I seem to recall that Manitoba university student ruining the fun for everyone.
I don’t know. On one hand it’s a good plus for consumers, Vidéotron and music streaming providers and everybody wins. I don’t know which consumer would complain about this.
One the other hand,it’s against the NN principle where every packet is treated the same. Slowing down packets, or counting only some type of data towards a cap, are both examples of violation of this principle
I’d certainly be upset if I was a streaming music startup that WASN’T part of this deal. Certainly anti-competitive from that perspective.
Videotron is open to new services. The consumers just have to ask for it
If fido jumls on something like this, I’d LOVE it and will gladly continue with apple music, Spotify or whoever is qualified under the agreemrnt. Until then, streaming really isn’t for me considering the toll it takes on data(it adds up)