Sony Ericsson planning rival to Nokia’s Comes With Music service?

Despite the imminent release of the excellent sounding 8 megapixel wonder C905 handset, the similarly impressive W902 Walkman phone and the promise of the flashy looking Xperia X1 before the end of the year, Sony Ericsson has been a bit down in the dumps lately.

That’s mainly been due to some less than impressive financial results, but perhaps a new, all-you-can-eat music service will help perk up the company’s fortunes. Hot on the heals of Nokia’s Comes With Music service, it seems Sony Ericsson would do well to plan its own subscription based music service and according to a Financial Times report, the company is already in talks with all major music labels about doing just that.

Sony Ericsson’s Walkman branded phones will certainly fit into the picture neatly enough along with the DRM-free PlayNow Arena online music store. Even so, it might not be enough to get Sony Ericsson out of the doldrums, and even the company’s content boss, Martin Blomkvist, noted last month:

“The way it is set up today, very few people, apart from the record industry, are getting rich on digital music. Generally speaking, the music today isn’t generating a boat load of cash for us.”

That would suggest that neither would the addition of subscription revenues, so presumably the plan is that a subscription based music service would encourage more handset sales, rather than be a powerful revenue stream in its own right. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here, let’s wait and see what Sony Ericsson announces first of all shall we.

(Via mocoNews)

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