Sony Ericsson's Music

Published by Ewan Spence at 12:02 GMT, January 28th 2008

As Amazon announce plans to expand their music store, StrategyEye points towards Sony Ericsson’s similar plans for a music store. Details are limited, so there’s no word on what file format will be employed (and ergo what form, if any, of DRM will be used), nor on what countries will receive the service ‘by the end of 2008.’

As with Amazon, the press release is geared more towards the Stock Market and keeping them legally informed of upcoming plans than making a PR splash, hence the lack of details, but it again shows that handset manufacturers are looking to bolster revenue, either directly through extra-value services, or increased handset sales because of the attractiveness of the third party services.

I’m also intrigued to see if the general public actually cares about DRM – iTunes music is DRM’med to the iPod range, while Nokia’s Music Store has Windows Media protection. If it works with their handsets, will the regular shopper actually care enough to be swayed by a bullet point marked ‘DRM free’ as opposed to ‘access to 3/4/5 million tracks’ or ‘unlimited music track downloads?’

What do you think?