Thumbplay and Cellular South Forge Deal: Cellular South Customers First to Have Direct Access to Thumbplay Music

NEW YORK, May 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Thumbplay®, the leading provider of mobile entertainment in the U.S. today, and Cellular South®, the nation's largest privately owned wireless communications provider, have forged a deal that will give Cellular South customers direct access to the new cloud-based Thumbplay® Music™ (www.thumbplaymusic.com) service.

As a result of the partnership, Cellular South customers can get unlimited, on-demand access to millions of songs directly from their wireless handsets and they will be able to download the Thumbplay Music application directly from Cellular South's Discover Center website.  The service will be rolled out soon on Android™ and BlackBerry® smartphones.

Thumbplay Music, a next generation music service built by experts in mobile content delivery, has more than 8 million tracks under license from all major labels and more than 35,000 independent labels and comes with a free, three-day trial.  Subscriptions are available for $9.99 a month.

"We're thrilled to be the first to offer Thumbplay Music directly to our customers," said Jim Richmond, director of Corporate Communications for Cellular South.  "Thumbplay Music literally transforms the smartphone into the ultimate, portable music player – it's loaded with features and an extensive catalog of music that will inspire music fans of all ages and tastes."

Richmond said recent industry research shows that more consumers than ever are using their mobile devices to download and listen to music.  A recent comScore study* revealed that listening to music is the third fastest growing use of mobile phones in the U.S. Richmond added, "Downloading and listening to music is clearly one of the fastest growing and most popular ways that consumers are using their mobile devices."

Evan Schwartz, CEO and co-founder of Thumbplay, said he expects Cellular South customers to quickly embrace the new service.  "They have an extremely engaged, loyal customer base that will fully appreciate having a rich, on-demand music service always at their fingertips," he added.

Thumbplay Music includes its own in-app media player and boasts several compelling features, including:

• Unlimited, on-demand access to any artist or album; millions of songs to choose from.
• Build a personal music collection with Favorites and Playlist creation; auto-sync between smartphone and PC/Mac.
• Online and offline access: No connection?  No problem!  Listen to music on the subway or in-flight.  Available anytime, anywhere.
• Genie for music discovery: Instantly generate customized recommendations from favorite songs.
• Search: Find music by artist, song, album or genre; includes free previews of all songs.
• Import existing iTunes® playlists within Thumbplay Music's companion desktop app.  With a few clicks, recreate iTunes playlists and have them available on smartphone and PC/Mac.

Thumbplay, which enjoys sustained profitability, has built an award-winning service centered on delivering mobile entertainment content to 95 percent of U.S. devices on every major wireless carrier.  Thumbplay will leverage its existing network of more than 8,000 distribution partners to promote Thumbplay Music.

* The study by comScore MobiLens, a mobile marketing research firm, covered the three-month period ending in March 2010.  The study reviewed the most popular activities and mobile content accessed by the nation's 234 million wireless phone users age 13 and order.

About Thumbplay

Thumbplay, Inc. is the leading mobile entertainment provider in the U.S.  Thumbplay Music, the company's cloud-based, streaming music service for smartphones and PCs/Macs, was launched in January 2010 with more than 8 million songs under license.  Thumbplay.com features licensed music, video and games from some of the world's largest entertainment companies, including: EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, as well as several independent labels and artists and video game companies.  Headquartered in New York City, Thumbplay was founded in September 2004.  Investors include Bain Capital Ventures, SoftBank Capital, i-Hatch Ventures, Redwood Partners, New Enterprise Associates, Meritech, Brookside Capital Partners and Cross Creek Capital.  More information can be found at www.thumbplay.com or at m.thumbplay.com from a mobile phone.

About Cellular South

Cellular South is a privately-owned diversified mobile communications company passionately committed to helping customers get the most out of their wireless devices and services.  The nation's largest privately owned wireless communications carrier accomplishes this goal by providing the most reliable and advanced 3G nationwide wireless voice and data network, offering industry-leading smartphone devices and accessible flat rate plans, and through its online and in-store Discover Centers, which give customers easy, simple and convenient tools, tips, advice and information to get the most out of their mobile phone.  For more information about Cellular South and its products and services, as well as its ground-breaking Cellular South Original user generated programming, visit www.cellularsouth.com.  This news release and other announcements are available at http://www.cellularsouth.com/news/.

SOURCE Thumbplay