Architecture & Design News South Africa

Mobile music initiative on hold

94.7 Highveld Stereo listeners will have to wait a while before they can start downloading music they hear on the airwaves onto their phones. The station announced today, Monday, 21 July 2008, that it will be postponing the launch of its music sales initiative to listeners as Sony BMG has withdrawn its consent.

This follows an announcement last week that the station was to launch the 94.7 Music shop on Monday 21 July in partnership with Exactmobile, which would enable listeners to download to their phone the songs they hear on Highveld.

The decision to postpone the launch was taken after Sony BMG withdrew its consent, originally given earlier this year. The service offered radio listeners the ability to download music by searching the 94.7 playlist, as well as access to over 200 000 additional songs on Exactmobile's music database.

Ryan Till, COO of Primedia Broadcasting, said, “We are still very excited about this South African first, and we are looking forward to enabling our listeners to download to their mobile phone the songs they hear on their favourite station in the near future.”

“It is regrettable that Sony BMG has withdrawn the rights for the service to operate. We would prefer not to run the service without the content of all players in the industry, and will evaluate our options before we decide how to proceed.

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