Orange users will have “exclusive” access to Madonna’s latest single, “Hung Up”, a week before its general release as part of France Telecom’s deal with Warner Music announced earlier this year. This comes on the heels of T-Mobile putting an exclusive Robbie Williams track on the Sony Ericsson W800i (the Walkman phone) it sells in Europe.
Jupiter analyst Thomas Husson points out how carriers are trying to use these deals as competitive differentiators, but I’m still skeptical that these single-artist promotions are very effective. Not only are these operators competing with other carriers, they’re also competing with file-sharers — how quickly after these songs are released to mobile will they be up online where people that are that interested can just go download them instead of switching carriers?