Sony Music launches SONY MUSIC JIVE: A first of its kind music service that enables consumers to download and stream music for free !

Sony Music partners with the new range of Sony Xperia Smartphones to launch ‘Sony Music Jive’ - a first of its kind music service that allows consumers to download and stream music from the Sony Music Catalog of 2 million songs, for free! Sony Music will look at innovations like premiering content exclusively for Sony Xperia customers for streaming and download and the first one will be a single from the soundtrack of the movie “Ek Thi Daayan” featuring Emraan Hashmi, Konkona Sen Sharma, Huma Qureshi and Kalki Koechlin with music by Vishal Bhardwaj. To meet the increasing demand for easy and legitimate access to music, Sony Music India has launched a unique first of its kind service - Sony Music Jive. Differentiating itself from Nokia Music Unlimited store (offers only download), Saavn (streaming only) and iTunes (consumer paid download), Sony Music Jive- allows Xperia consumers to download and stream music for free. Commenting on the same, Shridhar Subramaniam, President India and Middle East said, “Sony Music Jive is our foray into directly engaging with consumer by offering them a compelling digital music service. We have been doing a number of digital innovations and the launch of this new hybrid application is another such. I am confident that with Sony Music Jive, the Xperia handsets would be a preferred choice for the customers as it gives them and unmatched offering of songs and an easy and legal access to the global catalogue of Sony Music.” Kenichiro Hibi, Managing Director Sony India added, "We are excited to partner with Sony Music for the all new Sony Music Jive. Indian consumers are very passionate about music and we feel this compelling service will be huge reason for customers to choose our new range of exciting Xperia Smartphones. We have always been associated with making quality phones and this partnership allows us to leverage our strengths with our group company. This app fits in very well with our brand image of offering a great musical experience to our Customers." Sony Music Jive has access to 100 years of music ranging from iconic and pop artists such as Elvis Presley, Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston, Aerosmith, Bob Dylan, Micheal Jackson, Santana, AR Rahman, Shakira, Beyonce, Keisha, Pitbull, KK, Lucky Ali, Strings, Daler Mehendi, Harris Jayraj, Kailash Kher and more. Keeping with Sony’s global strategy of ‘One Sony’ this service will be first launched on Sony Mobiles’ new range of Xperia Smartphoes.In the coming months it will be available for other operating systems and integrated with operators so that all consumers can avail of this service. Sony’s exciting new range of Smartphones Xperia Z, ZL and E have already created positive ripples in the market. These Smartphones will have Sony Music Jive embedded in the phone. This service is free for the first six months from the date of purchase and consumers can then opt to subscribe to it after the initial free period. Consumer research has shown that Indian consumers attach great value to owning music and are in search of a hassle free download service. At the same time they like to discover new music through playlists that a streaming service offers. This insight led to the development of the Sony Music Service. The service is being powered by technology partner Indent (Infibeam Digital Entertainment Private Limited), a music tech start-up formed by Infibeam one of India’s largest ecommerce companies and the service uses a scalable cloud platform to provide a robust and quick experience. The users can browse through over two million songs across multiple genres -pop, rock, reggae, hip hop, country, classical, dance, Indian regional, Bollywood and download to keep, create a playlist or just listen on the go. The songs can be downloaded in MP3 format with variable and adaptive streaming technology for a great listening experience and 128kbps MP3 downloads. Sony Music will offer users of this service a number of unique benefits like ‘First on Jive’ which will be content exclusives from Sony Music latest International artists and Bollywood soundtracks, celebrity curated playlists and content that will be available only for Jive consumers.