| Vodafone, Sony in tie-up in streaming music project |
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LONDON: Vodafone Group Plc is teaming up with Sony NetServices to launch a new music service that enables customers to access music using their cell phones. The company, the world's largest mobile phone services provider, said the service, Vodafone RadioDJ, will offer streamed music from radio channels that can be personalised on to 3G phones or computers.
A key feature of the service will be the personalisation system. This affords music lovers to customise radio channels to suit their personal tastes using 'like' or 'dislike' options. Sony is providing the technology for the classification to ensure that songs categorised as 'dislike' will not be repeated when the customer goes to various radio channels. This way, customers can create a number of personal channels based on desired music genres, moods or specific themes.
London-based Vodafone said hundreds of thousands of songs, both current and catalogued, from the world's leading and smaller independent music companies will be available to the customers.
The service will be launched initially in six European countries -- the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Portugal -- in a few months' time. It will subsequently be available in about 20 other countries across the globe over the year. Vodafone said it would charge customers a monthly subscription for unlimited listening on both the mobile phones and computers. Songs can also be downloaded at an extra cost, which is expected to be 1 pound at a time.
This will be one of the diversifications the company is planning to secure additional sources of revenue so that it can meet the requirement of billions of pounds for investment in the 3G services.
Vodafone is treading into the iPod territory and expects to give it competition as subscribers to its service can listen to as many songs as they like unlike paying to download each track as in the case of iPod.
Recently Motorola has tied up with Apple to allow mobile users to listen to music track on the move. Sony Ericsson has come out with a Walkman phone. 3 is also planning to enter this territory soon.
Posted
on : Tue, 10 Jan 2006 20:05 GMT | General News
By : Rob Davis
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