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COMMENT: Mobile music - A project we can all subscribe too
ME staff Sep 26 2008, 4:16pm
Next week will be a big one for mobile music. ME exec editor Tim Green discusses why...
A few weeks back Edgar Bronfman, the head honcho at Warner Music, admitted that for all the noise and activity, the digital music biz is still basically about ringtones and iTunes.
We’ve been trotting out the old stat about Nokia being the biggest seller of MP3 players for years now, but we have to be honest and admit that mobile – as a channel for selling full-track music – has yet to really deliver. But for how much longer? This week has been a momentous one for mobile music. Next week could be even bigger.
On Monday SanDisk introduced launched slotMusic – a MicroSD card preloaded with DRM-free songs. It was a kind of last hurrah for physical music media, bringing songs, videos, cover art and extra info to mobile subscribers, and also to PC users (the 1GB cards will ship with a sleeve that plugs into USB ports).
Shortly after this announcement, the T-Mobile G1 Android phone was unveiled, and among its pre-loaded apps was a link to the Amazon MP3 music store. Although the app can’t manage OTA downloads via the network (it can only do so using wi-fi), it still represents another challenge to iTunes.
Then, on Tuesday night, came the big one. As expected, Sony Ericsson unveiled a ‘comes with music’ style offering in the form of PlayNow plus.
The service, powered by Omnifone, gives buyers of a W902 Walkman phone free music for their contract period – and they can keep 300 songs at the end of it. Next week, Nokia will throw a huge party to announce further details of its music push. Its forthcoming ad campaign is rumoured to be unspeakably huge.
Can such determined activity finally turn the tide for mobile music subscriptions? Maybe. Despite the stubborn hold of the ‘a la carte’ download model, there is evidence that subs just need to be packaged properly to make that breakthrough.
Earlier this year, TDC in Denmark launched TDC Play, which rolled up unlimited dual download music into the cost of a broadband tariff. It told me this week that Play subscribers downloaded 30m tracks in a period during which Danes would typically download 3m ‘a la cartes’.
That’s impressive. But for the music industry the challenge is to upsell premium products and services to these subscribers, whether live tickets, merchandise or mobile personalisation. It’s a massive challenge, in technical and marketing terms. It won’t be easy. But it starts now. Exciting isn’t it?
