Music Ally

Sony Ericsson has launched its PlayNow Plus unlimited music service in Brazil, making the country the first in Latin America where the service has gone head to head with Nokia’s Comes With Music.

Operator Vivo has bagged exclusivity until the end of the year on the PlayNow Plus-enabled W508 Walkman handset, which will come with 1,000 songs preloaded, and free access to the music service for six months. After that time, though, users will have to pay a monthly subscription fee to continue using PlayNow Plus.

Sony Ericsson says it will launch three more handsets with the service bundled in the first quarter of next year, as well as partnering with other operators.

Nokia is still the most popular mobile phone brand among teenagers, according to a survey conducted by virtual world Habbo. But even more surprisingly, Apple comes in fifth place, with Sony Ericsson, Samsung, and LG above it in the top five.

However, Nokia isn’t as popular among teens as it was last year. 21% of respondents said it was their favourite mobile brand this year, compared to 29% last year. However, it’s Motorola that’s dropped like a stone, falling from third place to sixth in the last year.

When it comes to operators, Vodafone is the top operator according to Habbo’s users, followed by Orange, Telefonica, Telstra and T-Mobile. However, the UK reveals slightly different results, with Sony Ericsson the top handset brand, and Orange the top operator.

With the growth of smart phones, web access and content are as central to the teen mobile experience as SMS and voice once were,” says Habbo UK country manager Oisin Lunny. “Mobile brands must engage with teens across these areas in order for teens to recognize them as market leaders.”

A mobile phone company holding a guerilla gig at a secret venue? Cor, nobody’s thought of that one before… Actually, that’s a bit unfair on Sony Ericsson, as there is at least an interesting twist to its upcoming Pitch Black gig in London with hot indie combo Friendly Fires.

Essentially, the 200-strong crowd will all be blindfolded, which apparently will give them “the chance to ”feel” the music and consider how each track affects them”. Now that’s a moshpit we don”t want to be anywhere near…

The band themselves will be playing with night-vision goggles too. Tickets will be given away on MySpace, as well as through contests on XFM and the NME. There’s some marvellous marketing bollocks in the press release too – apparently “by de-familiarising an experience we’re perhaps all too used to, it injects the necessary intrigue to make it fresh and exciting again”.

Quite.

Sony Ericsson has announced a deal with Universal Music Publishing Group to add the latter’s stable of artists to its PlayNow Uncut mobile music services.

The service, which has been around since October 2006 (initially as M-BUZZ), will now include UMPG’s artists, with plans to also preload their music on Sony Ericsson handsets, and also use it on Sony Ericsson’s Fanwalk site for the MTV European Music Awards.

“The collaboration with Sony Ericsson gives a fantastic outlet for some of our very innovative young artists to reach wider audiences globally,” says Simon Mortimer, VP of business development and media at the publisher.

We’ve been writing a fair bit about Android recently – Google’s mobile operating system – and now it’s getting even more relevant to the music industry. Possibly. Well, Sony Ericsson has confirmed plans to make its first Android phone, and there may be a Walkman angle.

“Sony Ericsson is excited to announce its membership of the Open Handset Alliance and confirm its intention to develop a handset based on the Android platform,” says the company’s Rikko Sakaguchi. “We believe Sony Ericsson can bring a wealth of experience in making consumer focused multimedia handsets with new user experience to the Alliance drawing on the successes of the Walkman and Cyber-shot sub-brands.”

So far, Walkman phones have tended to be massmarket handsets rather than smartphones, so an Android Walkman would be a lipsmacking prospect. Watch this space…

Comes With Music and PlayNow plus have yet to launch, but analysts are already predicting big numbers for the respective unlimited mobile music services of Nokia and Sony Ericsson.

Specifically, TNS Technology estimates that this category of services could result in British consumers downloading 2.1 billion tracks a year, cutting piracy but accelerating the decline of CD sales.

It’s worth digging into how the market research firm came up with that figure though (a gold star if you just shouted ‘market research?’). TNS apparently asked more than 1,000 people whether they were interested in signing up to these services, and if so, how many tracks they’d download a month.

More than a quarter expressed interest, and the average number of tracks they thought they’d download was 64 a month. In other words, that’s 768 songs a year per person, although apparently the figure was double for 16-24 year-olds.

“If replicated across the UK, that would equal 2.1bn tracks downloaded a year,” notes The Guardian, while also reporting the survey’s findings that 45% of users would buy fewer CDs as a result of using these services, 47% would buy fewer downloads from digital stores, and 38% would “reduce” their use of illegal file-sharing sites.

So, the headline 2.1 billion figure is based entirely on people who say they’d be interested in these services guessing how much they might download a month. Highly speculative, in other words, although TNS has been transparent about the methodology behind its prediction.

That ‘47% of users would buy fewer digital downloads’ stat is interesting, though – it seems unlimited mobile services might cannibalise existing digital sales more than CDs.

Early today, Sony Ericsson confirmed details of its new unlimited music download service, PlayArena plus. Omnifone is running the service, which will launch first in Sweden with mobile operator Telenor this year, before rolling out to other countries next year.

We talked to Omnifone CEO Rob Lewis this afternoon, to get some more details, and clarify certain points. He’s characteristically bullish about the deal, as you’d expect. “Walkman is an iconic brand in terms of music, and Sony Ericsson’s handsets have the best audio quality, and in terms of full-track music downloads from operator portals, they take in excess of 50% of the market.”

So is PlayNow plus just Omnifone’s MusicStation service under a different name? Not according to Lewis. In fact, it’s actually a rebranded version of the MusicStation Max service that was announced earlier this year.

(more…)

A couple of weeks ago the Financial Times reported that Sony Ericsson is to launch an unlimited music service to rival Nokia’s Comes With Music. Now another report has come from CNet claiming that the service will go live as early as next week. Sony Ericsson has, according to ”recording industry sources” partnered with UK firm Omnifone, which powers (more…)

Sony Ericsson plans to take on Nokia’s Comes With Music with its own unlimited music subscription service, according to a report in the Financial Times. It’s expected to be an extension of the newly-launched PlayNow Arena download service, and may even launch by the end of this month. While a logical enough move, the short timeline can”t help but give the impression that Sony Ericsson is somewhat flailing for options, following the distinctly low-key launch of PlayNow Arena – previously flagged as its big move into content retail.

Last year UK broadcaster Channel4 launched Mobile Act Unsigned with Orange and Sony Ericsson: an interactive talent show bringing together broadcast TV, online and mobile. The show’s format works as an A&R platform where acts must test their mettle in the live arena in front of an audience and panel of judges, comprising Blur bassist Alex James, Radio 1 DJ Jo Whiley and head of A&M records Simon Gavin. The winning act Envy and Other Sins walked away with an album deal with A&M UK (part of Universal Music Group), marketing support, management, a booking agent and merchandising deal. It returns this year, with the (slightly less catchy) title Orange Unsigned Act with Sony Ericsson. The premise is largely the same, but the competition is opening up to include singer/songwriters and urban acts. A transmission date is yet to be announced, but it is expected to launch in autumn.

Music Ally spoke to Simon Gavin and Sony Ericsson’s European head of music marketing about their involvement with the show, what they hope to get out of it, and what we can expect from the new series. (more…)