Mobile Music News II

: Guardian on the rise of the ringtone market with label-loving teens leading the growth.

: Egami Media enters the video ringtone market in Japan and South East Asia by exploring the signing of a non-exclusive agreement with Foreal.

: From Mark Frauenfelder:

The more exciting news is that Nokia vice-president Lee Epting says that she wants to encourage people "making ringtones, icons and other content and giving it out free to other users."

: Just as the Academy awards drive fans to movie theatres, the Grammy Awards are doing the same for the ringtone industry. Ringtone providers are bracing themselves for additional sales when artists win Grammys next week. More here.

: Boost Mobile's "Anthem 05" ringtone featuring Kanye West, Ludacris and The Game has raised over $65,000 to benefit The United Negro College Fund, The Ludacris Foundation and Chicago State University Foundation. More here.

: Music to the bottom line

: Mike Masnick on the ringtone market imbalance

: A generation after the birth of portable tunes on the Walkman, technology has made music available nearly everywhere for today's on-the-go consumer - and the recording industry sees a new wave to ride. More here.

: VeriSign’s new business in selling silly songs to mobile phone users is gathering all the attention at the moment. More here.

: Preferred Voice announces “Meet the Fockers” ringback tone service with Versaly Entertainment.

: Ingrooves launches mobile-only music label including exclusive and custom ringtone content.

: SDC announces new standards based DRM solution for Mobile Music

: From 3G Portal:

Leading the mobile music revolution are the technically superior 3G handsets and phone networks that are starting to be spread around the world. Technologically-savvy Asia is leading the way but the market is starting to take off in Europe and will start to be rolled out in Australia and New Zealand shortly.

: Ericsson unlocks mobile media potential at MIDEM:

"M-USE, the mobile music service developed by Ericsson in cooperation with the music industry. M-USE delivers to consumers personalized mobile music content such as music-clips, ring-tones, artist pictures, full length songs, video-clips, recommendations, music news and much more. Other services will be shown like personal greetings, as well as music-video streaming and Ericsson's payment solution IPX."

: Plugging the gaps in Mobile Music Market - Although record labels seem to be embracing and supporting the mobile music market, they still have a lot of doubts and concerns. Normally, the Internet can provide some guidance as to what may or may not work in the mobile industry, but for the record labels, the lessons from the Internet are still far from clear.

: 80s pop stars are also getting into the ringtone market by composing their own tunes. More here.

: Porn Star Jenna Jameson teams up with Wicked Wireless to provide music, R-Rated wall paper and her own branded of ringtones (Moantones) to cell phone subscribers in Central and South America. More here and here.

: Chaoticom to supply EMI Music songs to its European carrier partners such as Orange (United Kingdom), Telenor (Norway), Eurotel (Czech Republic), Pannon (Hungary).

: Business Week on how US operators, without much needed expertise, want to build mobile music services by themselves, instead of partnering with mobile music service providers. More here:

"Musiwave, a startup based in Paris, provides mobile music services to such carriers as Europe's Vodafone, France Telecom's Orange unit, and Spain's Telefonica. The privately held outfit hasn't signed up any customers in the U.S. "We find the wireless business model in the U.S. very unusual," says founder and Chairman Gilles Babinet. "Wireless carriers in the U.S. want to do everything for themselves. But they don't have the expertise to run a music business, which is why we tell them they would be better off -- and make more money -- working with a company like Musiwave."

The wireless industry's business model in Europe is similar to the pioneering road paved by DoCoMo in Japan. The latter opens its wireless networks to thousands of entertainment and news companies, which pay a small percentage of their revenue to DoCoMo, Babinet says.

That business model is slow to take off in the U.S., especially when it comes to music. Wireless carriers fear that their brand will be overshadowed by entertainment providers, relegating cellular service to commodity status. Their fears aren't baseless, although that dire scenario isn't inevitable, Baca says."

: From Ringtonia:

"Buongiorno Vitaminic launches Video Ringtones for Valentines Day, as a romantic alternative to the gifts of chocolates, flowers. Video Ringtones is a high quality mobile phone truetone with a short video clip, matching images and tracks with the personality of the person for whom it is intended. Senders can choose from a wide range of offerings, ranging from romantic ballads to hip-hop, available via Buongiorno‚s extensive catalogue of titles."

Comments

[Saurabh]

Wireless telephony has overtaken fixed telephony in India. With 41.6 million wireless subscribers and one billion strong populations, India's market potential is enormous. With the proliferation of the Hot Wireless service, it is regarded as hottest growth wireless frontiers and is the world’s 13th largest (source EMC) and is predicted that the market will grow many more folds and will be counted in a row with top 5 markets of the world namely China, Brazil, USA and Russia. The blistering speed of the wireless technology advancement and receptive subscriber of the Mobile entertainment makes the Indian market highly glorious. An unofficial report from a very prestigious Firm says that the growth will remain unstoppable and shall cross the mark of 120 million subscribers in India by 2008.
With the increase in the number of the subscribers the demand for the value added services went up and so is the demand of the quality contents for the operators and aggregators and in turn to the end users. To maximize growth and revenue opportunities in the burgeoning wireless content space, wireless service providers need to implement end-to-end content management solutions. Such solutions are needed to ensure cost-effective and scalable content management capabilities and to provide best-of-class content experiences by users which, in turn, drive further content adoption and usage. A comprehensive content management solution must address core issues such as acquiring, managing, and releasing high volumes of timely, accurate, and desired content to specific end users. And the only cost-effective way to address such complex and inter-related issues, even in the medium-term, is through end-to-end solutions that are integrated, automated, flexible, and fully scalable.
Value Added Service has definitely caught every operator’s attention. Today data-based VAS is more of hype, at least from the revenue standpoint. There is a huge untapped area in VAS, which when fully exploited will bring big bucks for everyone. However, for that to happen content providers need to approach the whole game with a new mindset, something that New Delhi based Value added service and content provider company Handygo has done in India.
Handygo is a pioneer in vernacular content development. They have gained experienced in content management by partnering with the major Operators and aggregators in India and Abroad. Handygo has greater need that go beyond optimizing contents for their customers. According to Mr. Praveen Rajpal CEO of Handygo, he ensures that Handygo meet the challenges of delivering content which are then translated into opportunities to lower their own costs via automation into the content handling process, and to build solutions that address both current and future needs. A robust content management solution should not only be end- to-end, it should also meet wireless service provider needs.
Handygo unlike its competitors acquires the contents that are needed most and fulfill the vernacularism. Narrowband and Broadband contents have increased the scope of the offered value Added Services to the subscribers. The major content providers like Mauj, Indiagames, Hungama; all competes in the same domain, with the exception of Handygo that caters diversified entertainment contents. Handygo unlike its competitors provide the platform for all the value added services, which is the cost incurring feature of today’s value added services. Team Handygo understand this and offers the complete expertise platform to operators.
According to Mr. Rajpal, his passion to work acts as the main driving force for Handygo to stay competitive and tuned in the industry. He can be contacted by sending mail to info@handygo.com

[dirk]

Cool!