Vodafone launches radio service over 3G

11 January 2006 23:38 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Vodafone sees the future in mobile content in music and has announced the teaming up with Sony to roll-out a global music service called Vodafone Radio DJ.

The new service will offer interactive, personalised radio channels streamed to both 3G mobile phones and personal computers.

Both companies are promising the service will be easy to use and personalize enabling customers to “train” the pre-programmed radio channels to their own personal tastes by simply pressing a button to indicate “like” or “dislike” while listening to a song. If a customer presses "dislike", the music skips to the next song.

Through Sony NetServices' detailed classification of each song in the catalogue - analysing beat and harmonies as well as genre and mood - the radio channels that individual customers receive will feature more songs that have characteristics in common with songs that are liked, whilst avoiding songs with characteristics similar to those that the customer dislikes.

The service will be available in three different varieties: Pre-defined Channels, Personal Channels and Collections.

Songs purchased on either mobile phone or PC will be available to download on both devices, with a separate high quality stereo copy being delivered individually to each.

Personal settings and personal channels created on the mobile phone will also be accessible from the PC.

The Radio DJ service will be offered on the basis of a monthly subscription for unlimited listening to music on both mobile phone and PC. There will be no extra charge to the consumer for the data traffic needed to deliver the music to the phone or PC.

Vodafone Radio DJ will be launched in six European countries in the coming months, namely UK, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain. It will then be rolled out to more than 20 countries world-wide over the following 12 months.

Full tags

Phones, Apps, Vodafone