New Symbian-based service from Sony offers tailored streaming music over GPRS, to launch across Scandinavia in parntership with TeliaSonera this season.
Sony Network Services Europe and TeliaSonera Finland announced today the launch of the Personal Media Assistant (PMA), the world's first mobile music streaming service. Offering instant mobile access to music and the convenience of listening to personalised selections anytime and anywhere, the PMA claims to be the next generation of mobile phone entertainment.
In addition to streaming personal music channels and playlists, this new concept delivers dynamic news content, artist information and community features such as messaging and music exchange. This co-branded PMA service was developed by Sony Network Services as a mobile entertainment application for mobile phone operators to offer to their end GPRS/3G customers.
TeliaSonera Finland will be the first operator to offer the service when it is introduced to customers in the second quarter of 2004, probably under a different name than this working title. in Finland. TeliaSonera, a telecommunications group in the Nordic and Baltic regions, is currently in discussions with Sony Network Services Europe to introduce the service in other Nordic countries.
Using the mobile phone as the key content provider, the PMA service offers a wide range of music from major and independent record labels. With the PMA, consumers can discover new artists and bands tailored to their individual tastes without actually owning the music, listen to favourite selections anytime and anywhere, even share tracks, playlists or collections with friends. Subscribers browse through a large collection of pre-defined music channels or create their own customized channel to listen to the music they want, and store selected tracks in a personal playlist.
This effectively turns their mobile phone into a personal radio tuner playing a pre-selected stream of music. The service also includes a unique smart personalization system that keeps track of individual tastes in order to provide an even more personal experience for the consumer. The more the user interacts with PMA, the more the system understands his or her musical tastes and the more rewarding the service becomes. Extra features are available on a variety of topics including entertainment, business, local and international news.
The PMA service is a Symbian based application that runs on Series 60 and UIQ phones over a GPRS/3G network. Because content is stored on a server rather than on the mobile phone, consumers have the entire music library at their fingertips at all times. Initially available to TeliaSonera customers in Finland in the second quarter of 2004, the service will be launched across Europe with major mobile operators in the near future.
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