Orange launches Music Store, a convergent music service for mobile phones and PCs

 Bucharest, January 26th, 2009. Orange Romania is the first operator to launch a convergent music service for mobile phones and PCs. With over 1 million songs from all times and across all music genres, Music Store is one of the most popular services for downloading digital music in Europe. Prior to its launch in Romania, Orange launched this service in France, Great Britain, Spain and Portugal.

In Music Store, the Orange Romania customers find the latest hits and famous songs thanks to the partnerships that Orange signed with the main international record labels – Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI, and with some of the most important independent record labels.

When ordering a song from the Music Store, customers make one payment and receive two files, one for PC and one for the mobile phone, with a streamlined quality for each terminal, regardless of the access interface – from www.orange.ro or the Orange World portal. The price for one song is EUR 1.6 + VAT, and when downloaded on the PC, it can be synchronized with the mobile phone using a data cable or an OTA (over the air) process.

In Music Store, customers can listen to 30 seconds bits of most songs available, free of charge; they can use the advanced search engine, and, with the help of Media Player, created especially by Orange, they can download and manage the music on the computer. The Media Player application is a new audio and video player allowing the storage and organizing of songs into play lists, their transfer on the MP3 player and on the Orange mobile phone or CD writing.

Moreover, the customers who activated the PrePay Music service plan, an offer designed together with Universal Music for young music and multimedia services enthusiasts, benefit from a selection of over 30,000 songs that can be purchased with a 30% discount to the standard price.

Mobile music gains increasingly more ground: in Western Europe, the number of mobile music service users increased by more than 50% between July 2007 and August 2008, a trend boosted by the convergent offers of music for mobile phones and PCs, according to M:Metrics.

“Since music is one of the most requested content products, we developed a set of services around this concept: www.orangemusic.ro for news, competitions and special offers, Music Store for downloading favorite songs and the PrePay Music service plan, providing customers with preferential tariffs for buying songs and music products to customize their mobile phone”, stated Oana Comănescu, Content & Multimedia Division Manager Orange Romania.

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