Walkman Brand Expands

Written by PRESS RELEASE

Monday, 18 June 2007

Berlin, Germany, 14th June 2007. Less than two years since launching the first Walkman phone, Sony Ericsson today announces a new mix of applications and services that make it easier to get music (and other media) onto your Walkman phone, and interact with it once it's there. As well as the complete range of Walkman phones and a whole line-up of music accessories, it's the full music experience that brings Walkman phones alive for the consumer. "Although the range of phones and accessories is at the heart of Sony Ericsson's music offering, it's the user experience which really makes the Walkman phone unique," says Ben Padley, Music Group Marketing Director at Sony Ericsson. "For our latest Walkman phones we have developed new applications that challenge the traditional way people explore their music, photo and video libraries. Find More Music Transfer your media between your PC and your phone with the Sony Ericsson Media Manager Access new music wherever you are with PlayNow Always know which song is playing using TrackID Listen Your Way Shake up your tracks with Shake control Feel your music with SensMe My content, my phone Getting Music onto your Walkman phone Media Manager With the all-new Media Manager PC programme you can organise your music, photos, video clips and podcasts on your PC and transfer them to your phone. An incredibly simple tool to use, you can search and select music on your computer or audio CDs and convert the tracks to mobile-compatible formats before the transfer takes place, thus saving time as well as your phone's resources. Media Manager replaces the Disc2Phone software included with earlier Walkman phone models and lets you do far more than just transfer music: SensMe - When music on your PC or on a CD is imported into Media Manager, it will use SensMe technology to incorporate mood analysis into the track details. So, when you transfer that music onto your phone, each song contains information on the mood of the track, which can then be used with the SensMe feature. Music Transfer - Select single tracks or a complete album from your PC music collection (or from a CD) and then click, drag and drop to transfer straight across to your Walkman phone. Media Manager will make sure it is transferred in a format that plays on your phone. Music Playlist - Use Media Manager to create a playlist of a pre-determined length of time from all of the tracks stored on your PC or phone. For example, if you know you are going to be on a train for an hour, then ask Media Manager to create a selection of songs for your journey. Imaging - Media Manager is more than managing music. Create a PC backup of favourite shots taken on your phone, freeing up your phone's memory and storing all of your pictures in one, secure place. You can also move pictures from your PC to your phone, so if you want an image from your PC as your phone's desktop, Media Manager will move it across and even re-size it to fit your phone's screen. Media Feeds - Media Manager also helps you enjoy audio and video podcasts on your phone. A podcast directory is included where you can browse through media feeds and choose which ones you want to subscribe to. Media Manager will monitor and refresh the feeds for you. You just select the episodes you want and transfer them to your phone to listen or view at your leisure. The first Sony Ericsson phones to feature Media Manager are the W910 Walkman phone, the W960 Walkman® phone and the K850 Cyber-shot phone PlayNow version 4.0 PlayNow is a stand-alone Sony Ericsson service that sits as an easily accessible icon on the phone's desktop and offers you the chance to preview or pre-listen to a variety of media content and then buy it over-the-air if you wish. Launched in 2004, PlayNow has since evolved dramatically to add new content such as Java games and full track music downloads. Now available in over 20 countries, this latest version (PlayNow version 4.0) significantly expands the amount of content available, including more music tracks, games, ringtones (mastertones), and wallpapers. PlayNow 4.0 at a glance: Hundreds of games and the ability to browse by genre Catalogue of 000's of Sony BMG tracks to pre-listen and buy Addition of downloadable wallpapers for your phone Greater choice of ringtones (mastertones) Brand new user menu, simplifying the browse and purchase process PlayNow 4.0 requires no new software in the phone, so will be available on most Sony Ericsson phones. It will be released this June. TrackID Ever hear a song in a café, bar or restaurant that you didn't know? Or even worse, it's on the tip of your tongue but you just can't remember the title or the artist? TrackID, in collaboration with Gracenote®, is an ingenious service to solve this problem forever. Using the phone's microphone, TrackID records a short clip and within seconds identifies the song, showing you the track name, artist and album, all for free.(Data charges may apply). If your phone has an inbuilt radio, TrackID even works there. Since launch in autumn 2006, over 2.5 million songs have been recognised by TrackID users on their Walkman phones around the world. To make the experience even better, Sony Ericsson is collaborating with a number of operators, enabling consumers to directly purchase the identified song from the operator's music store. On the W910 Walkman® phone and K850 Cyber-shot phone, both announced today, TrackID is taking music discovery to the next level. Now you can: save the information about a recognized song for later for convenient retrieval. search for music by typing in an artist name, song or album title and browse through the results. You can even find a song by entering a fragment of the song's lyrics receive background information about the artist identified discover even more music, by getting recommendations for similar music based on the song identified Managing Media on your Walkman phone Shake control Convention dictates that when listening to music, you have to press a button when you want to change the track you're listening to, or at the very least navigate to the next song on the Walkman® player. But imagine if you could switch between tracks or play games with a shake of your Walkman phone. If you're the owner of a W580 Walkman phone you need only to hold down the Walkman key and give the phone a shake, regardless of whether you have the Walkman player running at that time. Shake control will randomly play a track from your playlist, providing the perfect way to mix-up your music listening. With Shake control selected on the new W910 Walkman phone, you can skip your music forward one track if it's flicked one way and back if it's flicked another. Shake it back and forth and it shuffles your playlist. It also adds a new dimension to mobile gaming. If you tire of using the dedicated gaming buttons, just steer the W910 from left to right to make your move. Shake control is introduced on the W580 Walkman phone and also features on the W910 Walkman phone SensMe Choose your music to suit your mood with SensMe, a completely new way to browse and discover music on your Walkman phone. Search your collection and create playlists based on tempo and style rather than on artist or album. The visual interface is unique as each of your tracks appears as dots in a matrix, placed along a horizontal and vertical axis according to their attributes. This way you can circle a group of tracks that match your mood to create a playlist, or simply select individual tunes as you wish. An alternative to the phone's more conventional music catalogue, SensMe is the perfect way to discover music that suits your every day living. SensMe will launch with the W910 Walkman phone. New Media Browser The unique new media browser from Sony Ericsson places all of your media in one central area, making it easy to access music, video or podcasts from one single icon on your phone menu. Just click on the Media icon on your phone desktop and choose where you want to go. Select Pictures and then drop down to either those you have imported using Media Manager or those taken with the camera. Carry out an intelligent search to see photos by the month they were taken, view thumbnail images or scroll through in full-picture mode. If it's music you are after, it's just as intuitive. Scroll to the Walkman® player, choose the album you want by searching through album front-cover artwork or create a playlist from the tracks you have listened to the most. It is also from here that you can select a track by mood using SensMe or mix things up a bit with Shake control. The new media browser is available on the W960 Walkman phone, W910 Walkman phone and K850 Cyber-shot phone. www.gracenote.com/corporate/ www.sonyericsson.com Related news items Ringtone Service Wins Creativity Award -26/09/2007 AudioHub Speaker System New From Logitech -12/09/2007 Broadcom Enthusisam for 802.11n Wavers -06/09/2007 Sydney Airport Network Improved For APEC -03/09/2007 D-Link Ships Half A Million Draft N Devices -14/08/2007 Newer news items New X-Series handsets from 3 -18/06/2007 Nokia pumps up the volume with three new Bluetooth headsets -18/06/2007 Nokia introduces three versatile mobile phones targeted to mid-range market -18/06/2007 Watch This! Sony Ericsson Bluetooth -17/06/2007 Two New Walkman Phones From Sony Ericsson -17/06/2007 Older news items New Sony Ericsson Music Accessories -17/06/2007 GPS Phone Solutions From Sony Ericsson -17/06/2007 New, Slim Sony Ericsson Clamshell -17/06/2007 5mp Sony Ericsson Camera Phone -17/06/2007 Tag This Now: