Sony presses play for MP3 files on Walkmans

 

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By Alun Williams

Posted on 25 Oct 2004 at 12:18

MP3-playing Walkmans are being launched by Sony, and existing NW-series Walkmans will also have a firmware update for accommodating the de-facto Internet standard for compressed music files.

As we reported back in September - Sony does u-turn for MP3 support - Sony has abandoned its position on only supporting its own ATRAC-format. The devices, which have up to 1GB of Flash memory, are Sony's first to accommodate the more popular MP3 format.

The snappily entitled NW-E95 has a memory capacity of 512MB (roughly the equivalent of storing 23 CDs) and the NW-E99 1GB (roughly equivalent to 46 CDs).

Sony claims the lightweight devices, which weigh 40 grams and have a backlit LCD screen, have a battery life of 70 hours. They also come with a neck strap - the whole point of the original Walkman, of course, was to enjoy music on the move.

'Today, we are introducing two new models, with high capacity, competitively priced and with direct MP3 compatibility, which we believe will further develop the credibility of the WALKMAN brand in the Personal Network Audio Market,' said Gregory Kukolj, General Manager for Personal Audio Europe at Sony.

'At Sony, we understand the needs of music lovers and the different ways people consume and interact with music because of our great heritage in the personal audio arena,' he added, despite the fact that other digital music player manufacturers have incorporated the standard in their devices for years. Indeed it was Sony's need as a music publisher that drove it to develop its ATRAC3 format, which constrains the way consumers transfer their music between devices.

The new Walkmans will be available from the end of November. UK pricing has not yet been announced.

Before the end of October existing owners of NW-series Walkmans - the NW-E55 and NW-E75 - will also be able to download software from the Internet to enable them to play MP3 files as well, in addition to Sony's ATRAC3plus compressed music.