Sony Ericsson revamps music shop; shows new devices

Japanese Swedish joint venture, Sony Ericsson, jumped on the mobile music bandwagon on Wednesday, with an overhaul of its PlayNow music store.

The next generation PlayNow store will allow consumers access to a greatly expanded range of content, discoverable through features such as TrackID, which allows users to search for songs using snippets of lyrics.

Sony Ericsson’s catalogue will also be expanded to offer a wider range of content including hundreds of games, themes and wallpapers, as well as millions of music tracks and thousands of mastertones from both major and independent labels.

Consumers will be able to access the PlayNow arena from their mobile phone and their PC, enabling over the air downloads to the phone or side loading of content from PC to mobile. The majority of the music catalogue will be offered in DRM-free format, the company said.

Roll-out of the enhanced PlayNow service will start in the second quarter of next year.

Sony Ericsson also unveiled a number of handsets ahead of the Christmas bonanza, including the web friendly K660 HSDPA device with preinstalled Google applications.

There’s also the touchscreen W960 UMTS/wifi Walkman phone which packs a 2.6″ display and 3.2 megapixel camera. As well as the W890 and W380 Walkman devices, which feature 2GB and 512MB storage on Sony memory sticks, respectively.