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Warner Music boss says smartphones are the future
Scott Bicheno Nov 16 2007, 2:14pm
Bronfman uses GSMA keynote to get chummy with digital music and unveil new initiative.
Edgar Bronfman Jr, chairman and CEO of Warner Music Group, has used his keynote at the GSMA conference in Macau to say that he thinks the future of of the music industry will depend heavily on smartphone devices.
"The mobile platform is an enormous part of the future of the music business. And I believe that music is crucial to the future of the mobile industry," he said. Last year sales of music-enabled phones topped 80 million units while MP3 players sold less than 50 million. And next year, there will be more than 200 million music enabled handsets."
He also presented a mea culpa on behalf of the big music companies. "By standing still or moving at a glacial pace, we inadvertently went to war with consumers by denying them what they wanted and could otherwise find…and as a result of course, consumers won."
Warner's solution to this predicament appears to be something called the Connected Music Experience - CMX for short. In essence this appears to be an attempt to simplify the music buying process over mobile phone to promote impulse purchasing.
