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Sony pioneers personal radio to mobile phones

By Reuters
Hanover, Germany, 18 Mar 2004

Sony said yesterday that it would launch the first "personalised radio" service to mobile phones which consumers can tailor to their own tastes.

The Japanese electronics, film and music giant also unveiled the European version of its Internet music store Connect, aiming to beat Apple's iTunes Music Store to the European market, while relaxing restrictive usage rules of its SonicStage player which no longer limits the number of copies per song.

Sony, at the electronics trade show CeBIT, said it is talking with "almost all" mobile telecoms operators across Europe to bring personal radio to handset users, starting the service with the Finnish arm of TeliaSonera in April.

"We have been talking about networked services for a long time and now Sony comes out of the gates with music services. The mobile streaming service is unique," said Robert Ashcroft, Sony's European boss of Network Applications and Content Services. The personalisation feature makes the service a world first, Sony reckons. Operators such as NTT DoCoMo in Japan and US carrier Sprint offer straightforward music streams.

Already, half a dozen European carriers are building computer systems with RealNetworks to enable them to upload or stream music and video to handsets. These computers can handle music from Sony, but also other coding formats.

In Finnish trials earlier this year, the streaming music service appealed to older, professional users, because it enabled them to create their own music channel, Sony said.

"These people do not tune into today's radio channels which are aimed at a young audience. Our service allows them to discover their own music," Ashcroft said.

Teach the machine

Consumers can tailor the music stream by pressing a button on their phone to indicate they like or dislike a song.

"It is self-learning. The channel will adapt over time," Ashcroft said, adding wireless carriers are expected to charge a monthly fee of between 10 to 15 euros for the service.

Sony's service, for which it has no name yet, will work on advanced multimedia handsets running on the Symbian software system, available on phones from Nokia, Siemens AG, Sony Ericsson, Sendo and others.

The music will be sent over the GPRS data-capable network of a mobile operator at a speed of 16Kbps. It is not close to compact disc quality, but Sony reckons it is good enough to start with, while waiting for the faster 3G networks.

Connect music store

Sony also announced the European opening in June of its Connect music store on the Internet, where consumer can buy songs from 0.99 euros apiece and download them on their computer before exporting them to Sony minisdisc players and walkmans.

A version for the US, competing with Apple's hugely successful iTunes Music Store, was announced in January.

Connect will start in France, Britain and Germany with 300 000 songs from the five major labels, including Sony Music, plus independent publishers and national and regional artists.

"Consumer interest can be up to 70% into local content," said Ashcroft. Ashcroft was hopeful Sony would be able to quickly expand the catalogue, as music publishers realised their future was on the Internet, despite the threat of piracy.

"There has been a sea change in the industry. All labels have been willing to discuss licensing their catalogue to as many credible platforms as possible. And Sony is a very credible platform," Ashcroft said.

Sony has beefed up its software player SonicStage and while giving better compression for more efficient storage and increased protection against piracy, the firm had also removed the restrictive usage rules which consumers have balked at.

There is no longer a limit to the number of times a CD can be copied or to the songs that can be compressed and exported to other SonicStage devices. Rival software, such as RealNetworks RealPlayer or Apple's iTunes, does not have such restrictions.

There will be more restricted export rules for songs bought at Connect, depending on demands from the music labels, Sony said.

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