The company is hoping that the service will rival iTunes, which launched earlier this month. It is to charge £1.50 in the UK and €1.50 (£1) in Europe a track and will offer 250,000 full-length tracks by Christmas.
The five new handsets are being marketed under the banner of Ear Phones and will start at £29.99 in the UK or €59.95 for T-Mobile subscribers. Pay-as-you-go phones will be introduced in the coming months.
While the track price is more expensive that the majority of existing music download services, the price of the handset compares favourably with the cost of iPods, of which there are around 3m in the world. The company says that before long most T-Mobile handsets will be Ear Phones and that conservative estimates will see it sell more than 4m of the handsets by the end of 2006.
Nikesh Arora, chief marketing officer at T-Mobile, said: "If the technology had been available to provide music in your phone when mobile first launched, by now this world would probably have 1bn mobile music phones. Now the technology is available and we're launching Ear Phones -- simple, rapid download, high-quality music, stored and played in your phone."
Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music are all partners in the scheme, along with independent labels including V2, Kontor and Edel.
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