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Vodafone has announced a deal with Warner Music which will make Vodafone the first global mobile network operator to offer its customers over-the-air access to the combined music catalogue of the world’s four largest music companies in DRM-free format.
Vodafone customers will continue to enjoy their current download service with rights to use tracks they have paid for just once across all of their personal music devices without restriction – but now with the additional benefit of having a far greater number of tracks to choose from. Furthermore, Vodafone and Warner Music will work together to offer a range of mobile music products such as value-added album bundles that contain additional multimedia content.
“Warner Music’s addition to our mobile DRM-free catalogue is really great news for our customers,” said Pieter Knook, Vodafone Internet Services Director. “The response to the DRM-free offering in all the markets where it has launched has been incredibly enthusiastic. Our customers love music and they love the flexibility that DRM-free on mobile gives them.”
“We’re pleased to be expanding our partnership with Vodafone, who share our vision of how to help foster the growth of mobile music and create further opportunities for connecting fans with artists by offering premium album content anytime, anywhere.” Eric Daugan, SVP, Digital Business, Warner Music Europe.
Warner Music’s wide-ranging inventory will start to go live for mobile in DRM-free format straight away, and will contribute to a total library of over 1 million tracks. DRM-free downloads via mobile are already available to Vodafone customers across many European markets with more to come.
For details on exactly which countries get the DRM-free format, and where the Warner catalogue will be distributed, click here.
About The Author
Ben Robinson
Ben is a 10+ year veteran of the Mobile industry – starting his career when SMS was a still a relatively new concept for most people (!), he has now consulted on everything from bleeding-edge Mobile content, to the next-gen accessories you might view it on. As a result he has a broad and deep knowledge in numerous areas of Mobile – from network operators to device vendors, to infrastructure and middleware vendors (not to mention content delivery) – and has worked for companies in all of these areas! He is based in the UK, a hotbed of activity for mobile, and recently became a father for the second time – as oppose to in his younger years when he was happy spend time tweaking all manner of mobile devices to 'nth' degree, he now looks for services and hardware that provide the most efficient, compact, and reliable improvements to his already manic life! It’s his opinion that Mobile solutions should be there to help to make your life better – if a particular solution (be it service or device) isn’t doing this, he believes you need to ask the very important question of why you continue to use it... His focus at IntoMobile is mainly on Mobile content, services, and infrastructure, particularly as regards the UK market – and with the occasional look at devices. Additionally, using his extensive experience in the industry, he will provide commentary on the industry at large, with regular (and hopefully thought-provoking) articles.
