People, your music station awaits?

February 24th, 2007

A group of British entrepreneurs who made millions in the dotcom era are taking on the might of Apple and its eagerly awaited iPhone with a new mobile music service which gives fans access to more than 1m tracks for just £1.99 a week.
And users will not need to pay the hundreds of pounds that Apple is expected to charge for the iPhone as the service works on three-quarters of existing mobile phones

Another new business model and media ecology?

Our goal is that all the major European territories will have at least one operator offering MusicStation by the time of the iPhone launch in November.

Said Omniphone’s chief executive Rob Lewis.

Perhaps they should be talking to blyk ?

What I see, is a new media ecology being built. Make up you own mind what that means. Its not just omniphone and we dont know if they will succeed, however, some will, some will create the same seismic impact that google, ebay, youtube and myspace have done.

Tomi always said the world wil go mobile, and it will. you can argue about the the applicaions till the cows come home, but that is the ineviatble future of our world.

Is sex not everything?

MusicStation, which will be unveiled today at the mobile phone industry’s annual shindig the 3GSM conference in Barcelona, is aimed squarely at seeing off the competitive threat posed by Apple’s iPhone. For the mobile industry, desperate to increase revenues in saturated markets such as Western Europe, the iPhone seems to work mostly in Apple boss Steve Jobs’ favour. There is no need to use a mobile network to download music, MusicStation can be slotted into the phone just like an iPod.

For the handset manufacturers they risk losing market share, while music publishers fear it is yet another example of the continuing strength of Apple in the digital music market.

Yes Apple us sexy, is it not amazing that a computer company broke the music industry model. So how unsexy does that make the music industry?

So lets talk scale, as I know some people like to have that conversation. The trouble is idea of scale if prmised in a non-digital world

As well as working in collaboration with the world’s major music labels, Omnifone has already signed partnerships with 23 mobile network operators, who have subscribers in 40 countries and a total customer base of 690 million subscribers.

Digital reach outscales any analogue proposition. It cannot account for search or even micro payments.

More mobile phones than PC’s, CD players, well you name it. And who said it first? Well of course Tomi

here are also more mobile phones than computers and internet connnections worldwide, meaning that for many people a standalone digital music player is not an option. Omnifone, for instance, has struck a deal with South African network Vodacom to roll out the service in parts of Africa. Users are also billed through their mobile contract – or pre-pay card – rather than a credit card, which also widens its potential reach.
So far, the mobile music market has been dominated by ringtones, their better quality equivalent “realtones” and ringback tones – where a piece of music is played to a caller before the phone is answered – rather than downloads of fulll tracks. All five UK networks – 3, O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone – are offering mobile music services. Usage and revenues, however, are still low. The mobile phone operators have found it hard to come up with easy-to-use services, and consumers have often found themselves being charged a lot more than they expected to actually download the tracks they have bought.

And the reason the mobile networks have suffered is through complex pricing plans a nd a fear that if we use data we get screwed.

This is how it works

Playlists, Artists and Genres are all there just like on an iPod. Users can search for an artist, find a track or album and download it then play it, put it in a playlist and rate it. Users can download as many tracks as their mobile phone can hold and once it is full – which could be anything from just a few songs for a cheap pre-pay handset to hundreds for a top of the range Nokia – the software deletes songs that are not played very often.
The service also uses the connected capabilities of the phone, allowing users to publish their best playlists, search through other people’s lists, read charts of what other people are listening to and receive news and ticket updates about their favourite bands. MusicStation also looks at what a users has been listening too and recommends other things they might like.

Although this is why no-one will use it

The downsides of the service are that users cannot move their existing music collection from CD over to MusicStation, and if they stop paying every week their music collection vanishes. Anyone cancelling their subscription can store their music collection and playlists on the network and return to them some other time, but all tracks downloaded onto a phone will be locked. Omnifone are obviously hoping that the price of the service will drag in customers. It compares with T-Mobile’s music jukebox, for instance, which charges ?1.50 a track and Vodafone’s music service at 99p a song. Both also have a much smaller library than MusicStation.

So its a walled garden, the internet is not and soon the mobile will be fully functioning with the web via wifi/ wibro/ and anyting else you can think of.

Its a proposition that realy appeals to the music companies, but not to us the people formerly known as the audience. We dont mind paying, but…. we hate, hate, hate being locked into a realtionship we cannot get out of. That is human nature.

The Long Tail?

In fact, the music companies only get paid for music actually listened to, not for music downloaded onto a phone. So the service also offers them a way to make money out of artists’ back catalogues.

Its a half step, but its the full step.

My questions: how is this sticky?, How does it pull on social networking? How does recommendation play a role? Why would we engage and geetig our playlists back sounds dodgy?

I wonder if we will end up paying a music tax?

via the Guardian

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