Vodafone and Sony gang up on your ears

Personalised radio coming to a bus or train near you...

By John Oates • Get more from this author

Posted in Mobile, 9th January 2006 15:32 GMT

Vodafone and Sony are teaming up to provide a radio service for mobile phones which they claim will offer truly personalised music.

The service, dubbed Vodafone Radio DJ, comes in different parts - pre-defined channels based on genre or mood which can skip to the next song if you don't like what you are listening to. Or personal channels which you can "train" to your tastes by pushing the like or dislike buttons. Vodafone will also offer collections of about fifteen songs based on themes or picked by celebrities.

Vodafone claims the service will give: "access to hundreds of thousands of songs, both current popular hits and back catalogue, from the world's largest record companies, and many smaller independent labels."

It will be available for 3G phones and PCs with customers getting a copy for each platform.

The service is paid for by monthly subscription with no limits, or extra charges, on the amount of bandwidth needed to deliver the music. It will launch in "the coming months" in France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the UK. Twenty other countries will follow over the next year. ®

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