The lowdown on Sony Ericsson's online music plans
by Chris Ziegler 
posted Sep 21st 2006 at 5:59AM
Now that the dust's settling in the wake of Nokia's Loudeye acquisition, Sony Ericsson reckons it's time to get down to business on their own direct-to-phone music downloads. The service (which they've previously alluded to) will be called M-BUZZ and will use its PlayNow service -- currently focused mainly on ringtones and games -- to get content onto the Walkman phone of your choice. Actually, that's not quite true: M-BUZZ will initially be rockin' only on the W850 and W950 series; not quite the sweeping, retroactive compatibility we'd have liked to see, but with the W950's generous legroom for tunes, we do think they picked the right launch phone. Sony Ericsson's saying they'll be first focusing on "new and up-and-coming artists" out of Sony / ATV's library (read: crap they can't find any other way to sell?), but they seem to be leaving themselves the option of significantly expanding the catalog if the service takes off.
Filed under: Multimedia, Sony Ericsson
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ced @ Sep 21st 2006 6:39AM
... with mobile operators limiting datatransfers to 10 or 20 Mb/month in their 3G or EDGE plans how can such services be successful ?
Lia @ Sep 21st 2006 7:21AM
It will initially offer content for download to the phone, with new commercial aspects being developed later as additional features are incorporated in the M-BUZZ space.
Snoogans @ Sep 21st 2006 9:21AM
So does anyone know if the 950 is coming to America? the website says tri-band, but it showed up on the FCC's website a few weeks ago, someone please clear this up for me
flamer's grill @ Sep 21st 2006 11:22AM
"... with mobile operators limiting datatransfers to 10 or 20 Mb/month in their 3G or EDGE plans how can such services be successful ?"
If you're paying three dollars or euros or pounds per song, I think the mobile operators will be fine with letting you download as many songs as you want outside of their data limit. that said, for this to happen you gotta think that Sony will have to give operators a large chunk of the revenues.
But why would operators do this? In the US, Sprint and verizon just created their own music delivery system and it has generated millions of downloads, and they keep all the money. They had to spend money to develop the system, sure - but it's now in place and they own it and they keep the money (the portion not doled out to record labels, of course).
So the Sony model is gonna have to distribute the money to Sony, record labels AND carriers. I just don't see this succeeding when the operators can just go out and contract a system of their own that they control. Sorry, Sony.
Joe Mobile @ Sep 21st 2006 4:32PM
Flamer, if you really worked in the industry and didn't spend all day in your jammies reading Engadget, you'd know that VZW and Sprint DID NOT create their own delivery system and DO NOT keep all the money after label royalties. The VZW system is powered by WiderThan and Sprint's by Groove Mobile (who both keep part of the revs, I'm sure).
flamer's grill @ Sep 21st 2006 11:35PM
They contracted these companies to create these systems, no?
Joe Mobile @ Sep 22nd 2006 12:59AM
No - the platforms were already built and running with other carriers. WiderThan with SK Telecom in Korea and Groove Mobile with Orange in Europe.
ThoWar @ Sep 22nd 2006 8:55AM
"datatransfers to 10 or 20 Mb/month in their 3G or EDGE plans how can such services be successful ?"
Flatrate datapackages at affordable prices for UMTS/EDGE are not that far away. In Sweden (with TeliaSonera) you never pay more than aprox. 1,20$ per day for unlimited data transfers.