Press Releases

Budapest, October 14, 2009

With unlimited download of millions music tracks and an assortment being unique in Hungary, Sony Ericsson and T-Mobile offer a new music subscription under the Play Now™ plus name, available for a monthly fee. The service will be one of the few world firsts, available in Hungary from today only for the subscribers of the market leader mobile operator. Play Now™ plus offers the experience of enjoying music freely, the service can be tried free of charge in the first 14 days.

Music is part of our lives, we are happy to listen to our favourite tunes and performers either at home, on the go, at work or while doing sports. With the spread of mobile phones – e.g. the appearance of Sony Ericsson Walkman phones – music also became more mobile. Downloading music though requires a PC, and tracks stored on the home PC are not always accessible.

The joint Sony Ericsson and T-Mobile music subscription called Play Now™ plus – available from October 14, upon paying a monthly fee – eliminates these barriers. Following the introduction in Singapore, Sweden, The Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland, Hungary will be the sixth country in the world, and the first in the CEE region to offer the Sony Ericsson Play Now™ plus music service.

Play Now™ plus – available for a monthly fee of HUF 2.400 (subject to a 1 year loyalty commitment) – offers free access to the world’s four largest music publishers’ and most of Hungary’s music publishers’ ever growing music assortment, including unlimited download in Hungary, within the T-Mobile network. Upon the service launch, this includes millions of music tunes, representing the most versatile styles. PlayNow™ plus not only creates a new quality in accessing music content, as users will experience a new dimension in terms of the unique extent of the data base, speed of download, the simplicity and transparency of the user friendly opening site.

Post paid subscribers of T-Mobile using the service – also including some community solutions – can simply and easily access new songs and tracks even on the go, while using Play Now™ plus they can also share them with other music subscribers. In the Play Now™ plus menu items of appropriately enabled Sony Ericsson phones continuously updated information will entertain users interested in the world of music, while subscribers can also get in touch with other users with similar taste.

The millions of tracks available through the service can be downloaded with DRM copy protection, however users can listen to them either on their PCs or mobile phones by installing the a Play Now™ plus PC programme, and the two terminals can be easily synchronised. Tracks can be listened to all through the subscription period, plus after the expiry of 6 months the 100 most frequently downloaded tracks (increased by 17 more tracks each month after that) become available without copy protection, so those can be kept and enjoyed even after a potential cancellation of the subscription.

The Play Now™ plus data base is easily accessible using mobile Internet and the tracks selected can be downloaded and enjoyed on the mobile phone through the T-Mobile broadband network within an average time of 10-60 seconds. Currently three terminals can be chosen with the Play Now™ plus subscription: Sony Ericsson W995, Sony Ericsson W705 and Sony Ericsson W595. These telephones can be purchased at extremely favourable prices, even with an interest free instalment scheme, assuming a 2 years subscription. The range of enabled phones will be extended even this year. These Play Now™ plus enabled mobile phones will feature 1,000 pre-installed tunes selected based the top lists, and this number can obviously further increased using the catalogue available upon paying a monthly fee, containing millions of tracks. The HUF 2,400 monthly fee – conditioned upon a 1 year loyalty commitment – also includes the domestic data traffic required for downloading.

Identifying unknown tunes – e.g. heard through the radio – is assisted by the Track ID function (available in the telephones) which records a few seconds of the track and consequently identifies the tunes by the performer and the title. Due to the rich assortment, the identified track can most probably downloaded immediately from the PlayNow™ plus data base. T-Mobile’s post-paid and Domino pre-paid subscribers can test the new music subscription service with the specified Sony Ericsson telephones, free of charge.