LISMO

LISMO is an online music service provided by au, a Japanese mobile phone brand run by KDDI, a Japanese telecommunication company. This service uses a mobile phone as a music player. This service was introduced on January 19, 2006, and the service began operating at the end of January in Japan. The first mobile phone which supports LISMO was sold on January 26 2006.

Name

LISMO is short for au Listen Mobile service. The "LIS" in "LISMO" is pronounced the same as "risu", the Japanese word for "squirrel".

etting of Mascot

The mascot of this service is LISMO-kun. It is a silhoette of a squirrel carrying an orange logo with earphones connected to it. It is said to be born in Vienna, Austria, currently at the age of 0. It loves listening to music and watching movies, just like the regular au cell phones, on its free time. Some original goods of this mascot are sold only at the "LISMO FOREST" of KDDI Designing Studio.

upported phones

LISMO is supported only by CDMA 1X WIN phones.

;Released in 2006
*Casio: W41CA,"G'zOne" (W42CA),W43CA
*Hitachi: W41H,W42H,W43H,W43HⅡ
*Kyocera: W41K,W42K,W43K,W44K
*Sanyo: W41SA,W42SA,W43SA
*Sharp: W41SH
*Sony Ericsson: W41S,"Walkman Phone" (W42S),W43S,W44S
*Toshiba: "Music-HDD" (W41T),W43T,W44T,W44TⅡ,W44TⅢ,W45T,"DRAPE" (W46T),W47T,
*au design project: "neon" (W42T by Toshiba)

;Released in 2007
*Casio: W51CA,W52CA,"EXILIM Phone" W53CA
*Hitachi: W51H,W52SH, "Wooo Phone" W53H
*Kyocera: W51K
*Panasonic: W51P,W52P
*Sanyo: W51SA,W52SA,W53SA
*Sharp: "AQUOS Phone" (W51SH),W52SH
*Sony Ericsson: W51S,"Walkman Phone" W52S,W53S
*Toshiba: W51T,W52T,W53T,W54T,W55T
*au design project: "Media Skin" (W52K by Kyocera), and "INFOBAR 2" (W55SA by Sanyo)

Features

Function overview

This system provides the following functions;
* Listen to music on a mobile phone and/or a personal computer.
* Download and share music on a mobile phone and/or a personal computer.
* Copy music from a CD (compact disc) to a mobile phone.
* Share playlists with other LISMO users.
* Use downloaded music as a ringtone
* Backup address book data etc. to a personal computer

File format

"Under investigation"

The music file has .KMF extension on the phone and becomes .KDR on the PC, the codec is HE-AAC with 48 kbit/s bitrate, which is same as au's full track ringtone service.

Core services

* au Music Player
*: A music player application for au’s mobile phone. Music on the handset can be managed through this application program.
* au Music Port
*: A mobile phone data managing application for a personal computer. This application is used to share and backup data from a mobile phone. Manages not only music data, but also other data in the mobile phone like camera data, PIM data, etc. Supports only Microsoft Windows
* au Music Store
*: A service similar with the iTunes Music Store. Customers can download and purchase music with PC. The average price of one song is about 315 Yen (including taxes) and there are 20,000 songs available at the beginning of service.
* Uta Tomo (うたとも) (TM)
*: Play list sharing service. Works over au's server.

Internationalization

This service is available only in Japan as of January 2006.

Commercials

LISMO commercials, which changes approx. every 3 months, use many songs by J-pop artists. On March 5, 2008, an album titled "Best of LISMO!" will be released. The album will contain all 10 songs used in LISMO commercials that aired by the Summer 2007. [citeweb |url=http://www.jbook.co.jp/p/p.aspx/3496857/s/ |title=JBOOK: Best of LISMO! |accessdate=2008-02-08 |language=Japanese]

List of songs used in the commercial (in order of which the commercial aired):
# 花 - ORANGE RANGE
# 以心電信 - ORANGE RANGE
# キミのとなりで - BoA
# ブラックアウト - ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION
# Keep Tryin' - Hikaru Utada
# バイマイメロディー - Ken Hirai
# 三日月 - ayaka
# Lovers Again - EXILE
# CHE.R.RY - YUI
# たしかに - Angela Aki

ee also

* Connect
* iTMS
* Japanese mobile phone culture

References

External links

* [http://www.au.kddi.com/english/index.html KDDI au]