Sony Ericsson finally respond to Nokia’s Comes with music unlimited music download service The service will initially be exclusively launched with Telenor in Sweden during the fourth quarter of the year, but it will be launched in other parts of the world on several carriers beginning in 2009. Though SE has followed the footsteps of Nokia to launch a similar music download service, they have tried to improvise the service by adding new features. PlayNow Plus is being marketed as ‘all-you-can-eat’ service which will give access to millions of song on a PlayNow Plus supported device. Users can listen to and buy songs from their phones and PC, sync playlists and even create their own profile to share their recommendations with other PlayNow Plus users.
PlayNow Plus draws from Sony Ericsson’s collaboration with Omnifone and licensing terms with music labels including EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music. The first device that will be PlayNow-plus-enabled is the Sony Ericsson W902 Walkman. As part of the deal, the handset will be preloaded with 1000 of the most popular recent music tracks. And if those are not enough, you can go online via your cell phone and browse and download unlimited amount of whatever music you like. As said, the service is initially only available in Sweden with Telenor. It’ll cost about £10 a month (data transfer included, as far as we’re aware).
In addition to the introduction of PlayNow plus, Sony Ericsson has also announced that its PlayNow Arena portal will be available in five new Europea countries. So, besides Sweden, Finland, Norway and Denmark, where PlayNow Arena is already accessible, by the end of 2008, the following countries will get the service too: UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria.
