Flat Fee Hong Kong Music Downloads

Music XS hopes to save Hong Kongers CD-ripping time.

Smartone has launched their new downloadable music service last week in Hong Kong called Music XS. The idea is that instead of buying songs one at a time like on iTunes you just play a set monthly fee and you are able to access over 600,000 songs on your PC for HK$56 a month or HK$96 a month for your PC and your Smartone mobile phone similar to how most other music services around the world do it.

For those technically ignorant of how you rip your CD’s into MP3’s or don’t know how to download them from file-sharing sites, this is probably the best thing since the iPod itself. The trick is that all this music is on load to you while you subscribe, so once you cut your plan you get to keep nothing, but while you are on the plan you get unlimited access to the 600,000 songs that you can download and listen to anytime. So if you really wanted to you could have all 600,000 songs on your PC right now.

There is a 14-day free trial right now so you may want to have a listen and a try before you get into a plan. For those who like to have this kind of deep database of music it sounds like a good plan, if you listen to the same 10 songs everyday this may be overkill for you.

Learn more here.

UPDATE MARCH 28: And for no other reason than we are loving the current season of American Idol, we present this week’s amazing performance by contestant David Cook, with an unbelievable version of Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean: