Sony Ericsson joins the music bandwagon

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 03:59:00 -0500

In an effort to stay within hearing distance of the many other mobile music announcements, Sony Ericsson has revamped its Playnow music store to allow subscribers access to a greatly expanded range of content, discoverable through features such as TrackID, which allows users to search for songs using snippets of lyrics.

Sony Ericsson said that it plans to have a new mobile music service up and running by the second quarter of next year. This would be a big step from the phone manufacturer's current platform, which only gives users access to downloads of Sony BMG music.

Sony says it has already received support from EMI Group, Universal Music and Warner Music. "The situation today is that we have offers on the table of five million music tracks, as a first step, from all the majors, as well as local and independent labels," said Sony Ericsson head of content acquisition, Martin Blomkvist.

Consumers will be able to access the Playnow service from their mobile phone and their PC, enabling over the air downloads to the phone or side loading of content from PC to mobile. The majority of the music catalogue will be offered in DRM-free format, the company said.

For more about this story:
- read these articles from TomsHardware.co.uk and Telecoms.com

SPOTLIGHT: Vodafone offers unlimited downloads

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 07:59:52 -0400

Vodafone UK is offering customers unlimited access to over a million tracks from all the major record labels, as well as leading independents, on a range of new handsets for Christmas. Through an exclusive agreement with Omnifone, Vodafone will roll out their MusicStation service, giving customers the ability to download tracks from Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, EMI Music and Warner Music Group direct to their handsets.