Are the music streaming companies paying T-Mobile to take part in the program? If not, is the barriers to entry objection sufficiently mollified? That is, the carrier is making an entire class of content zero-rated, not picking favorites.
So IMHO opinion it's still Zero Rating but consumer friendly because it does not favor one music streaming service over another. I'm not trying to promote T-Mobile, just stating the facts as I see them. The cynical in me thinks that T-Mobile doing it without charging providers is to avoid any any competition legislation they are worried about running up against.
More here: http://www.eweek.com/networking/t-mobile-expands-free-music-...
Mobile devices are wonderful, but come on, the price of mobile data is assault with intent. I don't mind paying for my data. But I do object to being abused for wanting to use the network for non-trivial activities, such as twitter, farcebook, etc.