Sony Ericsson plans me-too music service

SPECULATION IS RIFE that Sony Ericsson will be forced to respond to Nokia's Comes with Music initiative. It may be contemplating launching an 'all-you-can-eat' version of its Playnow offering.

Thanks to Ericsson's strong roots in mobile infrastructure, Sony Ericsson has traditionally shied away from being seen to compete head-on with its customer base – the network operators. However, the world's fifth largest handset vendor is going to have to do something to shore up its market share, and building on the Walkman phone brand is the logical next move.

Hence, unnamed sources have told the FT that the company is plotting to launch its own unlimited downloads service this month September to steal thunder from Nokia's already announced Comes with Music launch in October. Given that Sony Ericsson only recently introduced an updated version of its existing music download service – Playnow Arena – it should be safe to assume that the service will simply be modified to offer unlimited downloads.

The rumour is that negotiations with the last big remaining record label, Universal, are well under way to provide the necessary comprehensive music service. The chief difference between Playnow and Comes with Music is that the former doesn't utilise DRM (digital rights management).

This could, in turn, put pressure on rival music services such as Omnifone's Musicstation which has been pressurised into using DRM by the record companies. The move to unlimited downloads is viewed as defensive rather than revenue-generating as Sony Ericsson's own Martin Blomkvist recently commented that the only people really making money out of music downloads are the record labels. µ