PlayNow to come to the PC
Rating: Sony Ericsson’s reaction to Ovi
By Tony Dennis
Part of the reason why Sony Ericsson
dragged a mixed bag of hacks and hangers-on to a nightclub in London’s Kings X was to promote a new version
of the company’s PlayNow content delivery service.
The revamped service appears to be called PlayNow Arena but I was left
scratching my head as to what was exactly new. And why we’d have to wait until Q2
2008 for it to arrive.
It was Sony Ericsson answer to Nokia’s Ovi launch alright, but I still didn’t
get it. Until I noticed that the ability to access PlayNow was built into the
software for Sony Ericsson’s new USB broadband modem – the MD300.
Unlike Nokia, Sony Ericsson has been reluctant to appear to compete directly
against its customers – the mobile network operators. Basically, one button
access to PlayNow has only appeared inside the company’s handsets if the
operator agreed to it.
From Q1 2008, however, by sticking the MD300 modem into your laptop’s USB port,
PC users can gain access to a whole range of content aimed at mobile phone
people – including music.
It appears that Sony Ericsson will be building up an impressive catalogue of
music which will include both DRM-free and Windows DRM secured tracks.
This is a subtle change because one of the major successes for Sony Ericsson
with PlayNow has been to create the Number One site for mobile games downloads
with some 200 games currently on offer.
There will be another slight change. Sony Ericsson also offers a music
orientated service called TrackID. It’s a bit like Shazam. TrackID will be
linked directly to the PlayNow Arena at its launch.
Some very impressive claims are being made for TrackID. Over one weekend the
service recorded some 144,000 hits and is averaging around 2.5 million hits per
month.
The facility will be used to create special TrackID charts which are compiled
from the results of the most popular service. Better still, besides recognising
some 80 million different tracks from a sound sample, TrackID will soon be
offering the ability to recognise them from just a few of the lyrics typed in.
Yours truly tried this out and the service correctly identified last Nite a DJ
Saved My Life from just three words. And the answer was only seventh down the
list.
Strangely I found that the most impressive part of the whole PlayNow service.
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