After the barren post-ringtone years, is mobile music stirring into life?
In a few days, ME will host its first conference: Mobile Music Now.
And we’re doing so with the market emerging from a moribund state into something new and potentially game-changing. DRM, subscriptions, ad-funding, apps – all of a sudden everything’s up for debate again.
When ME launched, the music business was milking the ringtone cash cow. It was briefly worth $4 billion a year. But mis-sold subscriptions and self-configuring by users butchered that bovine. And what came into its place? Operator full-track stores offering an inferior experience to iTunes – at twice the price.
They were dark days, brightened only by a few interesting ideas like Shazam. So even though listening to songs on mobile flourished (thanks to Walkman, Xpress Music, etc), paying for it didn’t. Well, apart from in Japan, where they do things differently.
A year ago, things changed. Omnifone’s MusicStation concept brought unlimited subscription music to millions of Voda users. Nokia’s Comes With Music did the same, but hid the cost in the handset price. Then Sony Ericsson mimicked the model with PlayNow Plus.
Meanwhile the general drift away from DRM was adopted by the mobile community, removing another high barrier to adoption: in March 2009, Vodafone became the first to go MP3 on its download store.
But, of course, mobile music is not just about selling stuff. Labels are discovering its power as a marketing medium. At first this manifested itself in the obvious, such as over-paying Robbie Williams, and sponsoring festivals.
Then came the app store and widget era and suddenly the ability of mobile to deliver new experiences around a band became possible. Thus, O2 and Sony Music launched individual artist stores, while developers like Yuza Mobile emerged to develop utilities for labels.
In the last few weeks there has been more movement. First Spotify confirmed it was going mobile (although not with its ad-funded option), then Virgin Media UK unveiled the first DRM-free unlimited music service. Soon after, Nokia told ME it hoped to take Comes With Music the same way.
Mobile music hasn’t truly delivered yet. But there’s still a lot to discuss.
Click here to read Part Two of our special series of features focusing on mobile music - a Q&A with 24-7 Entertainment CEO Frank Taubert.
Advertisement
