Orange Monkey – streaming mobile music

The UK division of French Mobile Network Operator Orange has launched a prepaid streaming music player for mobile and desktop. In keeping with the Orange UK animal theme for tariff plans, the new service is known as Monkey. This I find pretty significant as so many aspects of the offering have been aimed at the lower socio-economic end of the market – namely, consumers who do not own a credit card.

Recognising that the cash-strapped don’t always have smartphones, Orange has resurrected the old British Telecom dial-a-disc technology and will be streaming music by phone call. Those readers of a certain age may remember BT’s dial-a-disc, call 160 from any phone and listen to Top Of The Pops for 10 pence per minute, it was quite popular in it’s own time. The Orange Monkey phone number will play music for free as long as the consumer tops-up by more than £10 each month.

I’m not sure whether this will catch on. It’s not going to be a great quality service for the listener as streamed music over a phone line can’t be much better than 32 kbps.

Similar services do exist, one I use frequently is www.audionow.com, a website that provides dial-in numbers for American radio stations. I should add, I don’t use Audionow to listen to the radio, oh no, it’s an excellent resource for VoIP engineers who need to ring test phone numbers and keep those calls open (without making nuisance calls!). Much better than the lists of ‘telephone company test numbers‘ that proliferate the Internet.

Feel like a blast of nostalgia? You can listen to an archived BT dial-a-disc recording by ringing +442392988085 and following the prompts.