2006-01-23: SFR strengthens its leadership in mobile music


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SFR strengthens its leadership in mobile music by launching:

  • The Unlimited Music Pass: Europe's first unlimited music rental service for mobiles
  • SFR Radio DJ: the first interactive, customisable music service in France

    For this year's MIDEM, SFR is launching two totally new services in France: the unlimited Music Pass, the first unlimited music rental package for mobiles in Europe, and SFR Radio DJ, the first customisable, interactive music service in France. These services enrich the music offer SFR has already been marketing since December 2004 on 3G mobiles. With the launch of these two new products, SFR is further strengthening its leadership in digital music, as well as its place among France's top paying music download platforms.

    The unlimited Music Pass, Europe's first unlimited music rental package for mobiles

    For the first time in Europe, SFR is launching an unlimited flat-rate service for downloading music onto mobile telephones. This eagerly awaited offer applies a pricing system to mobiles that is already very familiar to Web users.

    Technically developed by Musiwave, this unlimited music rental offer works like a monthly subscription, with no minimum period requirements. It provides SFR customers with unlimited access to a music catalogue they can download onto their mobiles. The €14.90, monthly subscription lets customers download as many titles as they want, for unlimited listening on their mobiles. Customers may cancel their monthly subscription at any time; the rented, downloaded tunes will simply no longer be playable.

    Titles are downloaded onto the mobile directly from a dedicated application on the Vodafone live! Portal, SFR Music section.

    This service is limited to the first 30,000 customers on a selection of 3G terminals, with two big leaders in their respective fields: Universal Music and Nokia. The service is accessible from Nokia 6630, 6680 and N70 mobiles and covers a catalogue of 80,000 music titles. This service, which will be progressively extended to other labels, is yet another facet of the music download service SFR has been offering since December 2004. SFR boasts the most comprehensive music catalogue of any mobile operator in France, with 500,000 references from major recording studios like Warner, EMI, Universal Music, and Sony BMG, as well as independent labels.

    The market for paying downloadable music services on 3G mobile telephones is enjoying unprecedented growth, with 1 million music titles downloaded from SFR since the service's launch in December 2004.

    SFR Radio DJ: the first customisable, interactive music service in France

    With yet another innovation, in collaboration with Sony NetServices, SFR is launching an interactive music listening service on 3G mobiles and PCs. The real novelty is its feature enabling customers to customise their own music programs. The service lets users create their own stations by musical genre, atmosphere and era. Customised listening lets users instantly give their opinion by marking titles with a “like” or “don't like.” This way, the system learns the customer's musical tastes and makes proposals on the basis of tastes defined via previous choices. The titles in circulation evolve for a closer and closer fit with customer expectations. The user becomes the DJ of his or her own radio station!

    The technique used is music streaming, which means tunes are not stored on the mobile so users can listen to all the music they want, with no storage problems.

    The SFR Radio DJ service is available on the Vodafone live! Portal, SFR Music section. Currently, it is accessible to a selection of 3G mobiles (Nokia 6630, 6680, N70, Samsung Z104, Z500 and Sharp V902) and will be progressively extended to other ranges of phones during 2006.

    Customers may choose to pay for this service on either a daily basis, at €1.99 per day (24-hour package rate), or a monthly rate of €9.90, plus the cost of a connection to the Vodafone live! Portal (€0.10 per minute). No minimum subscription period is required.



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