Y’know how Nokia is about to launch its Comes With Music scheme, where you buy a handset and as part of the price get unlimited music downloads? Well, Sony Ericsson has just announced its own unlimited scheme to compete. It’s called PlayNow plus.
It’ll work on both phones and PCs, and is being run by Omnifone, the mobile music company that already runs a similar service for Vodafone here in the UK, called MusicStation. That works by you paying a weekly subscription, although it’s not entirely clear if the same model will be used for PlayNow plus.
Like MusicStation, Sony Ericsson’s service will include community features, like the ability to recommend tracks to other users. All four major record labels are on board, as well as thousands of indie labels, and when your PlayNow plus contract runs out, you’ll be able to keep a certain amount of tracks.
So when’s it available?
Continue reading ‘Sony Ericsson announces PlayNow Plus unlimited mobile music service’
Omnifone has announced at the Mobile World Congress that it is set to launch a new arm of its service called MusicStation Max which will be a direct to mobile unlimited music download service.
Not only that but the service is to be included with certain pre-licensed handsets as an in-built service. LG is the first company that will license MusicStation Max for a specific handset with said device set to land sometime in the first half of this year.
Continue reading ‘Omnifone MusicStation Max over the air unlimited download service announced with LG leading the charge’
Vodafone is set to do a double team on Nokia and Apple with Omnifone in order to enter the increasingly competitive mobile music space. The exclusive deal will mean that Vodafone users will have unlimited download access to over 1 million tracks contained in Omnifone’s MusicStation service for a measly £1.99 per month.
The service will be available to both existing 2.5G and 3G handsets meaning that a huge installed base of music hungry mobile users are already out there just waiting for the switch to be flicked.
Clearly kindred spirits because the two companies spell “phone” the same way (fone), the pairing seems to be a timely competitive move to tackle both the iPhone’s iTunes service and Nokia’s new music service.
Considering the iPhone is almost certainly not going to appear in Vodafone stores, whereas Nokia handsets will, it will be interesting to see how this battle pans out.
(Via Reuters)
