Sony Ericsson Launches Unlimited Music Download Service

Sony Ericsson today announced the launch of "PlayNow plus", a music download service for Sony Ericsson customers, designed to compete with Nokia's all-you-eat music service. The service is due to launch commercially with operator Telenor in Sweden in the fourth quarter of this year, with further roll-outs around the world beginning in early 2009.

A special edition of the Sony Ericsson W902 Walkman phone will be the first product released with an integrated PlayNow plus service.

PlayNow plus will offer an unlimited, 'all-you-can-eat' access to millions of music tracks. While in the service, subscribers will be able to recommend their music tastes to others in the PlayNow plus community, and at the end of their contract they will be able to keep a (limited?) number of tracks-DRM-free-from their most played favourites.

To kick-start the PlayNow plus experience right out of the box, Sony Ericsson plans to include, as part of the service, up to 1000 of recent popular tracks, both locally and globally, with each PlayNow plus phone.

The service draws from Sony Ericsson's collaboration with Omnifone and licensing terms have been agreed with all major international music labels-including EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music - as well as thousands of local music labels.

PlayNow arena, Sony Ericsson's multimedia service which launched in the Nordic countries on August 25th, will now also be opening its doors in the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Switzerland in the fourth quarter this year.

Rikko Sakaguchi, Senior Vice President and Head of Creation & Development at Sony Ericsson comments on the market expansion and catalogue addition: "Expanding our PlayNow service portfolio by adding PlayNow plus and by launching PlayNow arena in Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria and the UK during the fourth quarter, are key elements of the Sony Ericsson service strategy. These steps and the addition of Universal's catalogue to the music offering in both services gives us every possibility to provide customers and consumers with what we feel is important and requested - an unparalleled user experience on Sony Ericsson devices."

Posted to the site on 24th September 2008