Sony Ericsson details mobile music plans

The PlayNow phones will come preloaded with 1000 popular songs specific to region, but will allow customers to access millions of other songs, all of which can be downloaded for free. The service will be powered by subscription-music provider Omnifone, which has negotiated deals with individual record labels. And unlike Comes With Music, which bundles the cost of a one-year subscription to the service into the phone’s purchase price, Sony Ericsson and its carrier partners will charge a monthly subscription fee. At the end of the subscription, the customer will be able to keep a portion of the songs downloaded for no charge. That also differs from Comes With Music, which allows customers to keep all music downloaded within a year of purchase.

In the U.S., mobile music is becoming a hotly contested market. Verizon Wireless recently revamped its pay-per-download service into a subscription service powered by RealNetworks’ Rhapsody. AT&T supports a host of music services — most notably the iTunes store for the iPhone — and runs its own music download stores through Napster. Sprint’s music store is powered by Groove Mobile. Alltel’s music services have primarily focused on transferring music from the PC to music-capable phones in its portfolio. Today it announced a new application from Melodeo, called nuTsie, which allows customers to transfer their iTunes playlists to their mobile phones, breaking the barrier Apple has placed between its popular music management software and its portable music player.

The only major operator without a major music service is T-Mobile, which until the launch of its 3G network was limited by bandwidth over its EDGE networks. That may soon change, though, as the first inklings of a partnership with Amazon.com came to light at Tuesday’s launch of the first Android phone. The HTC G1’s media player connects directly to the Amazon music store, which offers 6 million digital rights management–free songs, which could go head-to-head with the iTunes store on the iPhone.