Vodafone to launch music service in Germany

Vodafone D2, the German affiliate to Vodafone Plc, is planning to launch a new service to allow users to download full lenght music tracks. The service was announced during the CeBIT 2004 in Hannover. The company will use a Java Digital Rights Management (DRM) tecnhology developed by Secure Digital Container (SDC).

The carrier's full length, over the air, music track downloadservice will enable customers to select, retrieve and store the latest chart hits to their mobile phone. Vodafone D2 will base its music delivery service on French company Musiwave's retail system. Musiwave will provide both the retail infrastructure and the player, with SDC providing its Java DRM technology to give a complete solution. The Siemens SX1 mobile phone, a Symbian Series 60 device, will be one of the first devices Vodafone will enable to use the Music service.

Vodafone D2, Musiwave and SDC also uses the AAC+ codec for the new service which enables full length mobile music tracks to be delivered in very small file sizes (as small as 700KB). This enables consumers to maximise the potential of their devices storage, with the maximum number of music tracks able to be downloaded with no degradation in quality.