HP Lounge to offer free streaming for a year to PC buyers, limited to UMG content

As the number of music streaming services multiply, there are those who think that there is still a place for hardware manufacturers to offer ‘bundled’ services for free with a limited catalogue. 

HP is obviously amongst one of them, as The Telegraph reports that the company has unveiled its own HP Lounge streaming service, that will come bundled with any new HP computer and will be free to users as well as completely ad-free.

The service is the result of HP’s partnership with Universal Music Group and the free service will last for one year from purchase. 

As with most services today, listeners will be able to choose songs on-demand from the limited catalogue, but they will also be able to search for tracks based on mood or genre. 

The service will cost £3.20 per month after the first year of free service, which is a considerable discount over Spotify’s £10 monthly fee. However, this is on a much smaller catalogue - possibly smaller than Amazon Prime Music’s offering which costs £79 per year and includes a myriad of other services such as Amazon free deliveries and Amazon Instant Video. 

The company hopes to attract younger consumers by bundling in this service. Based on previous bundling experiments by other electronics giants one could easily be a cynic and state that HP Lounge is doomed to fail and will quietly disappear in a year or so. However, the majority of consumers do not pay for a streaming service and consider £10 per month far too steep. Can HP Lounge persuade them to do so? Let's take the optimist route and say: only time will tell. 

(Andrea Leonelli)