PETALING JAYA: For all those of you who treat last month's Top 40 hits like yesterday's newspaper, you may want to consider renting music on a monthly basis rather than owning it.

If all goes well, music phone users will be able to "rent" an unlimited number of songs for a modest monthly fee from early June.

These will be full song downloads for mobile phones rather than truetones, which are snippets of songs used as ringtones.

"You have a choice of downloading the songs via the Internet and transferring it to your phone or having it "Bluetooth-ed" to you from one of MyMix's 13 music kiosks in Kuala Lumpur and Penang," said MyMix Sdn Bhd technical director Thirumaran Krishnan.

"The fees for the different packages are still being discussed with the (music) labels but hopefully it will be between RM10 and RM30," he said.

"There are many music-enabled mobile phones in the country and there is not much legal music content available. We want to be able to address this. This is the first such service in Malaysia," Thirumaran said.

However, some music industry executives are sceptical.

Thirumaran said there would be a few subscription packages to make the service attractive to as many Malaysians as possible.

The first package will cost between RM10 and RM20 for 20 songs.

The second package enables the user to download as many songs as his phone can hold. A 1GB storage capacity on a music phone can typically hold up to 200 songs.

Interested parties can subscribe through a website, www.mymixmobile.com, which will also be launched in June. "Payment can be made through Mobile Wallet, a mobile phone payment scheme," said Thirumaran.

Music fans can choose from more that half a million songs, in the MP3 format, in MyMix's catalogue. "These MP3s, which are protected by Digital Rights Management, will not be playable should the subscriber choose not to pay his or her subscription fee, which comes with a digital access key.

Recording Industry Association of Malaysia chairman Sandy Monteiro is upbeat about the subscription service. "If the price is right and the sound quality is good, there's no reason why it shouldn't work.

It will take a few first movers to roll it out.

It should be targeted at college kids, who can afford music-enabled phones," he told In.Tech.

Sony BMG managing director Adrian Lim was less upbeat. "We're not as advanced as South Korea or Hong Kong where such subscription services have taken off.

The market may not understand this, just yet," he said. "People have to be educated on downloading legal truetones and full songs onto their mobile phones in the first place, before they can get into subscription services." Reaction from several music lovers was mixed.

Independent pop-rock musician and music fan, Sudev Bangah, 26, said the service was interesting but doubts many people would want to use it. "People can easily get a tune from a friend or just rip a tune from their CD collection for free," he said.

Sudev added the "pull factor" was not there as he would not be willing to pay RM20 for 20 songs.

However, he said it was a great way to discover a new band or song. "If you have that a new artistes' song there and you like it, you will be more motivated to buy the full CD," he said.

Without the service, buying a CD could be an expensive mistake if you later find that the artiste is less than you expected.

Choy Wui Kong, a 27-year-old student, said he did not see how this service would be worth his money.

He said he would rather buy an original CD, which costs between RM36 and RM50, than use the service.

In his book, the only advantage of using this service is that he would be able to create his own playlist.