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Sony Ericsson has today confirmed plans to offer its very own unlimited music download service, launching the service - PlayNow plus - in Sweden this year, with an international roll-out penned for 2009.

Like Nokia’s ‘Comes With Music’ service (which Nokia chiefs take pains to say will cost more money than just the handset price), Somy Ericsson’s music attempt will let users download unlimited music at a fixed rate.

The company is reaching deals with operators, under which music downloaded through the service won’t count against a users’ data plan, carriers will instead get a slice of the $15/month subs fees.
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Nokia is planning a big media bash on October 2 to launch its ‘Comes With Music’ service in the UK.

The company is sending out invitations to media requesting they attend the launch party, to be held at London, Camden’s Koko, with performances from Keane and Ida Maria.

Nokia has reached an exclusive one-year deal with Carphone Warehouse, which will offer Comes With Music with the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic handheld.  
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Nokia will introduce its Comes With Music service in the UK next month, introducing its fill-yer-boots free music offering into Europe and Asia next year.

‘Comes With Music’ gives people a year of unlimited access to the entire Nokia Music Store catalogue (c.2.1 million tracks) with the ability to keep all downloaded tracks even after the year is over.

(We do wonder if Warner will take its music out of the system to boost album sales, post Adele, in order to maintain the fiction that it’s not out to weaken Apple’s market share).
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Sony Ericsson introduced its own digital music service, PlayNow arena, an online store selling music, games and applications free of DRM over the air.

The service is live now in Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Norway, with support for additional territories promised at a later date. The service launches with a claimed million tracks, though Billboard notes Universal to be the only major not yet to make content from its catalogue available through the service.
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Continuing the tendency to look to the iPhone, we’ve noted a few interesting statistics emerge recently. We think iPhone will have a growing impact on music and media as its story unfurls, so it’s well worth staying in the Apple loop, here at Distorted Loop.

Why does this device matter? It’s a good attempt at a multimedia device which is selling like hot-cakes and capturing global attention. It’s focusing the energies of competing firms on developing other multimedia-friendly products, meaning (for music and other media) creatives can consider a mobile platform into which to seed their art.

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Vodafone has launched its Vodafone Music service in the UK, offering song downloads over the air to supported mobile phones at 99p per track, or £7.99 for an album.

The service lets customers preview songs, download tracks directly to their mobile and offers immediate playback of purchased tracks.

Available music is searchable and tracks purchased on another handset can be transferred to a new one.
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Microsoft is unlikely to introduce a Zune phone to compete with the iPhone, Jupiter Research analyst, Michael Gartenberg tells us.

Writing in his online blog, the analyst says Microsoft won’t take te fight to Apple in this way because the “business model of Windows Mobile is totally different than Zune.”

The analyst argues that while Zune deployed technologies Mi crosoft shared with others, those involved in creating music players weren’t achieving a market presence. Not so Windows Mobile, he says.
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Sony Ericsson introduced its W902, W595 and W302 Walkman phones this week.

During the launch, the company’s Ben Padley, Head of music, said: “Since the launch of our first Walkman phone in 2005, Sony Ericsson has continued to pioneer a superior mobile music experience - and the 77 million Walkman phones sold to date are testament to this commitment.”

Analysts at Gartner aren’t convinced the company’s really doing enough to see off the threat from ever-cheaper, consumerr-focused smartphones, as players such as BlackBerry, Nokia and Apple move into the music device space.
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Digital music sales seem set to account for 25.5 per cent of global recorded music sales this year, climbing to grab 39.4 per cent of the market in 2009.
eMarketer’s latest report offers its worldwide recorded music spending forecasts for the next three years. It’s a little gloomy - driven mainly by the continued decline in physical format sales, spending is expected to decline from $27.9 billion this year to $27.2 billion in 2009, and $26.6 billion in 2010, though the analysts expect music spending to stabilise by 2011. However but 2010, digital sales will account for 48.5 per cent of sales in 2010, and an astonishing 56.5 per cent in 2011.
The researchers don’t think the industry is doing enough to capitalise on changing music consumption patterns, pointing out: “Music fans are longing for communities that offer a unique music experience and a mobile music platform that gives fans of its music events the opportunity to be involved online,” as such, the research urges music companies to look to ways to combine online, mobile and user-generated platforms (such as blogs) into compelling forces to stimulate sales.

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