Gerd Leonhard's Blog on The Future of Music, Media & Entertainment

E-Commerce News: Music : Mobile Music Services Overpriced, Consumers Say

Link: E-Commerce News: Music : Mobile Music Services Overpriced, Consumers Say.

Consumers are saying that mobile music services are exceptionally overpriced -- at least 85 percent higher than they actually feel comfortable paying.

Wippit - make your own Ringtones from any Wippit track

Wippit - Ringtones.

Wippit Ringtones is a new service that lets you edit your own ringtone from the original master recording right here on the web site using a simple interface and then sending the finished product straight to your phone. This means that instead of the usual pop pap and euro-trance wrongtones foisted on you on late night TV, you call the shots and choose what tune your mobile rings to.

Great idea!!!

new kinda ring

soundslikeaphone.com  now offers a range of ringtones recorded from real telephones from the Darvel Telephone Museum in Scotland, ranging from modern phones and recent classics like GPO trimphones, all the way back to a 1911 hand-cranked bell, to create ringtones that won’t make you cringe if your phone goes off when you’re out or in a meeting.... *from Ringtonia

Ringtones: Music To Music Moguls' Ears

a feature in Business Week. Favorite quote: "Publishing has always been a high-margin part of the business, but it stands to make a killing in this new world because of all the new ways for music to reach fans. "We love additive products, believe me," says Martin Bandier, CEO of EMI Music Publishing, the world's largest music publisher, with a catalog of more than 1 million songs."

Firefighter Phone has extra loud ringtone

ha!

Nokia and Microsoft --- huge deal

surprise surprise.... this is big news. I will blog more on this later

Japan: Chaku-uta (full track downloads to mobiles) bigger than PC downloads

Ringtonia has some good coverage on this very important trend : "KDDI officials said the number of daily "chaku-uta" downloads might have already surpassed that of any online music distribution service for personal computers in Japan"  !!!!!!

The greatest threat to Itunes / Apple is... the wireless networks

very much concur with Bronfman's view on this. THIS is the new frontier.Says He: "The music business is entering an "inflection period," Bronfman said, similar to the experience by the movie business in the early 1980s. That's when the value of filmed content increased, he said, because distribution outlets for video expanded from movie theaters and broadcast television to cable, videocassettes and other media"......   nicely put!

Satellite Radio meets mobile phone

From DigitalMusicNews (btw, a great source of news in this sector)

" XM Wearable Predates Satellite Convergence.  While early adopters tinker with the portable Delphi XM MyFi satellite receiver, XM CEO Hugh Panero is pointing to an eventual convergence with mobile devices. That would represent a major move forward for satellite radio, with genre-targeted music and information channels becoming truly ubiquitous. Already, firms in Japan and Korea are starting to push satellite-enabled mobile devices. TU Media, a subsidiary of SK Telecom, recently applied to the Korean Broadcasting Commission to receive license approval for its satellite TV and music broadcasting service for portable devices. That service would allow mobile subscribers to receive 14 satellite TV channels and 24 satellite radio channels on mobile phones. Japanese electronics manufacturer Toshiba is also sponsoring the effort"

Makes a lot of sense. Take the satellite receiver and stick it in the cell phone... add some more storage power, add a receiver for terrestrial radio and.... voila: Radio 2007!!!!

What a mobile music user really wants

Take your IPod / MP3 player, Instant Messenger, XM handheld receiver, DAB radio, Palmpilot, Blackberry / Treo, and your cell phone, and boil it all down to 1 (maybe 2) devices, and ... voila -- the mobile music device of the future. Move my songs from my PC to the 'phone', stream live music, listen to terrestrial radio or XM or Sirius or xyz, interact with other users... all in none place. is where we are headed.