To many in the music industry, Apple’s pending $3.2 billion deal for Beats Electronics, which emerged last week, suggested a watershed moment for streaming music by subscription. Once a marginal model, it is now being trumpeted as the future of consumption by Spotify, Rhapsody, Rdio and Beats’ own service, Beats Music.

But music by subscription also has doubters. Among them is Yonder, a small service opening this week with a very different model: selling specially licensed smartphones that allow users unlimited free downloads. Under this plan — sometimes called hard bundling — the cost of the music is hidden in the price of the phone.

Adam Kidron, chief executive of Yonder, said this has much greater potential than streaming by subscription, which despite becoming more prominent has remained a small part of the business. Last year such plans, which typically charge about $10 a month, attracted about six million customers in the United States.

“What we’re saying,” Mr. Kidron said in an interview, “is that we need a model that attracts the other 98 percent of people who are not paying.”