AT&T announced today that it is to offer a new phone by Samsung which features Napster Mobile, a wireless music download service which consists of a catalog of five million songs. The phone, dubbed SLM, costs $150 with a two-year subscription to AT&T and a $50 mail-in rebate.

Napster Mobile also allows customers to preview 30-second samples of each song and conveniently purchase and download their favorite music directly from their wireless handsets. Each song will cost $1.99 or, if they desire, customers can opt for the Napster Mobile Five-Track Pack option for a price of $7.49 per month.

The SLM by Samsung is a new, lightweight clamshell mobile phone with music and multimedia capabilities. The handset will be sold exclusively through AT&T and will be available in stores from November 23, the top U.S. phone company said in a statement.

The new Samsung phone includes AT&T Video Share, stereo Bluetooth, a 2.0-megapixel camera with video capture, and expandable memory through a microSD card slot. AT&T said the phone offers download speeds of 600 Kbps to 1,400 Kbps on its HSDPA third-generation cellular network. Weighing about 3.2 ounces and measuring about one-half of an inch thick, the SLM features a 96- by 96-pixel 65K color external screen and a 176- by 220-pixel 262K TFT internal color screen.

Apart from Napster Mobile, the handset will be the first to come with a mobile banking application which AT&T announced last week.

Napster Mobile will not be available on iPhones, because the device is tied with Apple's iTunes music store. AT&T wants to make some deals directly with artists, thus making available exclusively some tunes for its wireless subscribers. Such a deal appears to be that with Matchbox Twenty, who will provide content from their next album, "Exile on Mainstream," to kick off the service.

Napster as a subscription music service was launched six months after the iTunes Store, in October 2003. It was built on the dead original Napster company, which was bought by Roxio at its bankruptcy auction in 2002. Napster acquired AOL Music’s subscription service in Jan. 2007. Its Napster Mobile service, which AT&T uses, is a fully-integrated service available to wireless operators across the globe.