Weybridge, 13 Dezember 2007 - Sony today announced five strategic partnerships with leading premier music download services across Europe. These partnerships bring exclusive benefits to WALKMAN® customers in the run-up to Christmas, as well as providing access to the widest range of music - from the very best national and international artists and record labels.

 

These important partnerships follow Sony’s recent move, as announced globally at IFA in Germany on 30th August 2007, of a major shift in its WALKMAN® audio player strategy. At IFA Sony announced the launch of its new range of WALKMAN® digital media players (NWZ-A810, NWZ-S610 and NWZ-S510 Series) which, in direct response to customer feedback, support an Open platform and include Windows Media Technology. Its new generation of PlaysForSure-certified WALKMAN® personal digital audio and video players enables the widest possible consumer choice for new music purchases, and the easiest management of audio and video collections via Drag & Drop content management.

The strategic partners involved are the leading multi-format European audio download services, namely HMV (UK), FNAC Music (France), Musicload (Germany), Terra Pixbox (Spain) and Planet Music (the Netherlands)

 

These new partnerships provide WALKMAN® customers with an even greater choice than ever before for downloading and managing their music collections. The benefits range from 3 months' free trial for 'unlimited' music subscription, via free album downloads, to free new tracks every single week (depending on the country of residence and the purchase of a qualifying WALKMAN®). Registered customers on partner websites will also be able to enter free competitions to win free WALKMAN® products as well as exclusive limited-edition WALKMAN® merchandise. In the case of each partner, an exciting range of new customer-focused offers is already in preparation for 2008.

“These exclusive partnerships confirm Sony’s commitment to supporting an open standard with Windows Media Technology”, said Jeffry van Ede, Vice President Sony Audio Marketing Europe. “We are continuously striving to provide our customers with greater choice and flexibility for managing their digital music content. We are confident that these audio partnerships benefit our customers’ desire for an open standard and further enhance the versatility of our WALKMAN® products.”

These latest WALKMAN® ranges support the open formats of non-secure Windows Media Audio (WMA), AAC and MP3; as well as the leading secure format of WMA Digital Rights Management 10. In addition the NWZ-A810 and NWZ-S610 Series WALKMAN® players support the AVC (H.264/AVC) Baseline and MPEG-4 video codecs.

For further information on the WALKMAN® range, please visit www.sony-europe.com.