Sony Ericsson and Orange search for new music

Rating: Agaaado do do shake pineapple push a tree….

by Bena Roberts

Orange and SonyEricsson are teaming up to find unsigned talent in the UK. They are joining forces with Channel 4 to find Britain’s freshest unsigned talent in a new show called mobileAct (www.mobileact.co.uk).
SonyEricsson and Orange will offer the show a platform for interaction on mobile and viral exchange of clips and new talent etc.

What we think
What a great initiative. Please see our very own face of user generated content Hannah Finlay who is going to apply immediately.

But now to the juice. Sony Ericsson recently provided me with a fully loaded mobile application Walkman W880i. As a Nokia fan, I was unsure. But I have to be completely honest – I don’t want to give the phone back. (Also all my friends want it which is rather jolly, too). The music features have made me hip again and are addictive. The Gracenote loaded find that tune is so simple and instant that you can secretly find songs on your device and show off how clever you are… (secret: I did it and it worked).

Now with this show – how difficult would it be to index new songs or clips from the contestants and allow users to download the track, send it on or save the track? Agreed, its probably loads of hard work – but wouldn’t it be worth it? For example Telia Sonera made a big hooha about Eurovision. But it fell short of instantly allowing users to find and store tracks.

Imagine – listening to a newbie mobileAct track and instantly getting it on your phone by pointing the music search feature to it…. Yeah, baby.

What could make or break this show is the ability of users to instantly listen, save and store tracks which could be sent to friends and family (by Orange) as part of a special mobileAct offer or promo. The possibilities are endless. The index or search could then be put into a database or search engine of all music tracks from a white label search company, the Filter, MyStrands etc have recommendation attached to it by genre. So if the person downloads a clip on rock or classical they are instantly recommended similar.
Oh god – hold me back my mind is racing. But this is a great idea and SonyEricsson and Orange please try and be innovative – the music services for mobileAct start now.

Related News:

1. Mobile music search and discovery: three questions with Victor Fredell Sony Ericsson’s Content Acquisition Manager for music
2. Sony Ericsson developing geo-tagging location based search for music.
3. Orange The Music Show
4. Sony Ericsson talks up TrackID
5. CES Global Sony Ericsson Walkman W760 launched –but what about the impact on local search?