Music streaming apps, which have gained great popularity in recent years, helping lift recorded music sales in Australia higher for the first time since 2012, tend to consume fair amounts of user data allowances, to varying degrees depending on the quality of the stream.

New and existing Optus prepaid users, on select plans, will now be able to use Spotify, iHeartRadio, Google Play Music, Pandora and Guvera without eating into their data limits.

In the six months to the end of December, taking churn into account, Optus grew its prepaid customer base by 16,000 subscribers to just under 3.7 million.

However, in the same period, larger rival Telstra's total prepaid customer base slipped 59,000 just north of 3.8 million. Vodafone Hutchison Australia grew its total prepaid mobile customer base, over the six months to December, by 45,000 customers to just over 1.7 million.

Optus managing director of marketing and product Ben White told Fairfax Media the telco's Yes Music proposition would give it a differentiator in a mobile market that had been warring over pricing and data limits.

Game changer

"Yes Music is part of our broader strategy around delivering really game-changing entertainment experiences for our customers," Mr White said.

"It builds on all of the other moves we've been making recently around content, building on the terrific content partnerships we already have in place."

Optus will be hoping that by making more content available it can attract users from its rivals to switch over to it. Last year, the telco paid $189 million for rights to the English Premier League for three years and is making the content available only to its customers, apart from a one match per week deal with SBS.

While not ruling out extending the deal to Optus's 4.7 million post-paid customers, Mr White said the telco was focusing the package initially just on prepaid.

"One of the key reasons is if you look at the part of the market that probably has the most passion for music, it's typically young people, and our prepaid products play a particularly key role for the younger demographic in the market. That's why we were keen to start there," Mr White said.

Users will also get access to events through an Optus partnership with Universal Music and iHeartRadio.

"With the passion for and consumption of music at an all-time high, we couldn't be more excited to partner with Australia's most innovative telco, Optus, to create platforms that bring artists and Optus' customers together to experience life-changing events and content," Universal Music Asia-Pacific president George Ash said.