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Unwired for Sound

In a candid interview with The Daily Telegraph this week, Steve Wozniak – the "second Steve" behind Apple Inc. – predicted the imminent demise of the iPod, likening the world's most popular digital music player to the transistor radio or Walkman – devices which became so ubiquitous that they were ultimately worthless.

His words are likely to prick up the ears of the mobile industry, which has seen a glut of music-related announcements in recent weeks, all of which are aimed squarely at breaking Apple's stranglehold over digital, and encouraging the mass market to consume more music – and associated content – on mobile devices.

Last year more than 500m music-enabled handsets – those which can play MP3s or other digital music formats – were shipped worldwide, yet very few consumers actually use their devices to buy or listen to songs. M:Metrics reports that in Western Europe and the U.S. an average of just 10.7% of subscribers use their mobile devices as a music player. And of that small minority, 83% sideload tracks from their PCs, rather than download them over-the-air (OTA). But, given recent developments, that looks set to change.

Omnifone – a British start-up that took the "Best Mobile Music Service" gong at 2008's Global Mobile Awards – has been pointing the way for a while now.

It launched its MusicStation subscription service with Vodafone UK in November 2007, bundling unlimited OTA downloads and data charges with a regular voice tariff for an extra £1.99 per week.

Seven months later, the company claimed that it was already the most popular digital music subscription service in the country, even overtaking PC-based rivals like Napster.

Since then, it has gone from strength to strength – MusicStation has just launched in Australia and New Zealand and is set to power Sony Ericsson's PlayNow plus music service via Telenor in Sweden.

Nokia is also muscling in on the all-you-can-eat music space with Comes With Music, offering a new handset and 12 months' bottomless downloads for a one-off payment of £129.95. And, unlike MusicStation, the deal enables users to keep their songs after the first year's contract has lapsed.

The handset giant has managed to secure a massive library of songs, signing up the four major labels, larger Indies like Beggars Group and Ministry of Sound, and key aggregator, The Orchard. Yet there are still a few drawbacks which could cloud the success of the offering, including restrictive DRM, fuzzy guidelines on "abusive" use and slow network speeds and pay-as-you go data charges that make OTA downloading all but impossible.

Aside from the subscription models, there are plenty of incumbent online music stores going mobile. Apple itself has already made iTunes accessible on the iPhone and iPod Touch via Wi-Fi. Meanwhile, T-Mobile's recently announced G1 device – the first handset to be based on Google's Android mobile operating system – includes an application that gives instant access to Amazon's comprehensive MP3 shop. 

Apple's App Store is also proving attractive to the music industry as a new medium for distributing content. Snow Patrol – the "sad-sack bedroom folk  [turned] major-label arena rock" band – have announced that their imminent new album A Hundred Million Suns will come with a custom application for the iPhone and iPod Touch, enabling listeners to explore additional media like artwork, lyrics and behind-the-scenes photographs.

This desire to supplement digital music with paid-for content, and recoup some of the revenues lost to file sharing, is also a key driver behind slotMusic – a new physical format created by flash memory pioneer, SanDisk, and the major labels.

Effectively a 1GB microSD card pre-loaded with an MP3 album and digital goodies such as videos and wallpapers, the format will be available via both online and brick-and-mortar stores beginning with Best Buy and Wal-Mart in the U.S. With most new handsets featuring a microSD card slot, the new format is clearly designed to get less tech-savvy consumers listening to music on their phones, bypassing the traditional gatekeepers of carrier and OEM.

There are also a number of other smaller players looking to boost mobile music consumption, simply by place-shifting existing music collections – Melodeo and Didiom both offer mobile applications to stream music from desktop machines, while it can't be long until emerging, cloud-based music players like blueTunes begin weighing up their wireless options.

Discovery is another key area of growth for mobile music. Taptu offers a great mobile search engine tailored to finding content, enabling users to stream a snippet of a song from an artists' MySpace page, share it or click through to download the whole thing. And for users who don't know what they're looking for, but like the song their hearing right now, there's a gamut of music recognition services, such as Shazam, Gracenote's Mobile Music Platform and Melodis.

With Shazam, users can dial a number – either via a shortcode or an on-device client – hold their phones up to the music and quickly receive details of the artist and track title, along with options to buy it, explore related content like YouTube videos, or take a photo to create a visual archive of their listening habits. Shazam's iPhone application has already been downloaded 1.5 million times, with some users accessing the service up to 20 times a month. The company is now aiming to have its technology shipped as standard on 250 million handsets by the end of 2009, spurred on by a recent pre-load agreement with Samsung.

While handset manufacturers, operators, technology start-ups and even record labels all seem to be singing the same tune, what do the artists really think of mobile music? Well, this week also saw the launch of the Featured Artists Coalition at UK industry fest In The City. The group comprises big name acts like Radiohead and Robbie Williams and aims to protect musician's rights in the ever-changing digital age.

As Mobile World Congress approaches, it'll be interesting to see how the group's sway plays out. Over the last few years, acts such as Craig David, Jamelia and the Black-Eyed Peas' will.i.am have all been guests of honour in Barcelona at events like Mobile Backstage. With the mobile music market already developing at such a rapid rate, 2009 will clearly be a tipping point – can the mobile industry really lure consumers away from their trusty iPods and on to mobile handsets? And can the labels convince their roster that the humble phone is a worthy enough channel for their artistic output?

Posted by Luke Nava on October 8, 2008 at 12:26 PM