T-Mobile expands its Music Freedom program

Music and video streaming services are more popular now than ever. Unfortunately, they’re also among the top data plan killers each month and no doubt are responsible for the majority of data overage fees. Announced earlier this year, T-Mobile’s Music Freedom program was a breath of fresh air as it allowed the carrier’s subscribers to stream an unlimited amount of music from select providers without counting against their monthly data allotment.

T-Mobile announced Monday that it is expanding its program to give users free access to streaming music to 14 additional services. The program, which already gives T-Mobile subscribers the option to listen to services such as Pandora, iTunes Radio and Spotify without racking up data costs, now includes access to Google Play, Xbox Music and a variety of small services. The program was first introduced in June and has been very successful for the mobile carrier, said Matt Staneff, T-Mobile’s vice president of marketing. Customers, he said, have logged a 300 percent increase in the amount of music they listen to since the feature went live. The company has also conducted research, he said, that’s shown one in four U.S. consumers view the music perk as a reason to switch to T-Mobile.