Sonera introduces Sony's music service to its mobile customers

Sonera introduces Sony's music service to its mobile customers Sonera brings Sony's StreamMan service to its mobile customers. With StreamMan, you can enjoy a unique musical experience anywhere and anytime. The service allows you for example to listen only to your personal favourites or music of a certain theme or style - and with no commercials. The service is at the disposal of Sonera customers from now on. Sony's music service, presented at the Hanover CeBIT fair in March, has expanded greatly, and from autumn, it will also be available on the Internet through broadband access. StreamMan is a personalised music service, which utilises streaming technology and enables mobile phone users to listen to music, create playlists, listen to news, read on artists and send messages and playlists to friends. In Finland, the service is only available to Sonera customers. "We are very pleased to see Sony's StreamMan service go live for the first time in the world today in Finland. We are particularly happy to have the opportunity to work with TeliaSonera Finland - one of the most innovative operators in Europe - in launching this exciting new service. This is the beginning of a pan-European rollout that will see StreamMan launched by a number of mobile operators in other European countries later this year. StreamMan has the potential to generate large scale growth in data applications for mobile networks, and has elicited strong interest from mobile operators around the world", says Senior Vice President Robert Ashcroft from Sony Network Services Europe. Sony's StreamMan offers a wide variety of music from both large and independent labels through different channels. In addition to the usual stream of music, subscribers to the service may listen to channels playing only music of a certain theme or style for example a 90's hits channel. The service is also highly interactive, allowing customers to give feedback on currently playing songs by rating "like" or "dislike". StreamMan immediately utilises this feedback and adjusts the channel accordingly. Subscribers may also save songs in personal playlists and listen only to the music of their choice. "Sony StreamMan is more versatile than for example a radio program that plays songs requested by its listeners. It is also a means of communication with friends. Service subscribers may for example send messages or cards to and share playlists with friends, explains Department Director Olli-Pekka Takanen of TeliaSonera Finland. "In the future, Sonera mobile customers may listen to music transmitted by StreamMan also with their computer, if they have broadband access." In addition to providing individual music channels and playlists, the service also broadcasts news provided by the Finnish news agency STT and offers information on artists. Besides music and entertainment news, the up-to-date news offering of the service includes also business and sports news. Artist-related news contains for example biographies and pictures. Sony's StreamMan service is at the disposal of all Sonera customers. The service requires registration and application download. You can download the service to your personal mobile at wap.soneraplaza.fi > Viihde > Musiikki > StreamMan or wap.soneraplaza.fi > Ladattavat sovellukset > Viihde > StreamMan. For now, no connection or monthly charges will be collected for the use of StreamMan. Only a data transfer charge according to Sonera's valid price list will be collected. At first, the service can only be used with Nokia 6600 and Ericsson P800 and P900. For more information on the service, please visit www.sonera.fi/streamman. For more information, please contact: Olli-Pekka Takanen Department Director, TeliaSonera Finland Oyj Tel. +358 2040 62096 olli-pekka.takanen@teliasonera.com TeliaSonera TeliaSonera Finland Oyj, the Finnish profit centre of TeliaSonera, offers products and services under the Sonera brand. TeliaSonera is the leading telecommunications company in the Nordic and Baltic regions. At the end of December 2003 TeliaSonera had 11,957,000 mobile customers (37,610,000 incl associated companies) and 8,061,000 fixed customers (9,160,000 incl associated companies) and 1,631,000 internet customers (1,691,000 incl associated companies). Outside the home markets TeliaSonera has extensive interests in the growth markets in Russia, Turkey and Eurasia. TeliaSonera is listed on the Stockholm Exchange, the Helsinki Exchanges and the Nasdaq Stock Market in the USA. Pro forma net sales January-December 2003 amounted to SEK 81.7 billion (EUR 9.01 billion). The number of employees was 26,694. www.teliasonera.com ------------------------------------------------------------ This information was brought to you by Waymaker http://www.waymaker.net The following files are available for download: http://www.waymaker.net/bitonline/2004/06/16/20040615BIT00400/wkr0001.pdf