What a week! CTIA’s I.T. show in San Francisco was weird, good and educational. A show that started out as a way to reach CTOs and CIOs of top businesses to explain the benefits of using wireless technology outside the office has evolved into a mini-CTIA show focused on data.
While enterprise was still significant, gaming and music dominated the show. You can bet when this show started, nearly a decade ago, organizers did not think music and gaming would be leading wireless data applications.
Here’s my take on mobile music:
c Ringtones are yesterday’s news. Although they are expected to be a $4 billion (that’s billion with a B) global market this year, those revenue figures can’t be sustained. Apple’s iTunes cost 99 cents vs. the $2.49 people are paying for 30 seconds of a ringtone that doesn’t match the quality of a CD, nor is it performed by the original artist. This was a fast and furious love affair, but it’s time to move on. Love hurts. Yeah, yeah.
c iPods are going to be yesterday’s news if phone manufacturers have their way. Handset makers talking about advanced devices point to the mobile phone and claim it will be your iPod, only for roughly the same price as an iPod, you will be able to make calls, play games and listen to true tones. True tones are master recordings by the original artist. Take Britney Spears (please). Britney-hungry wireless subscribers evidently will pay money to download Britney’s latest single as a true tone, or even listen to the whole song. Also, they can watch her latest video, sign up for news on her latest marriage, download the cover of her latest CD to use as a wallpaper and play a new game branded with her name and likeness. Which leads to …
c Teens still have all the money in the world, and it is good to be a teen and bad to be a parent. (OK, no one said that last part. I’m purely speculating.) However, all this money changing hands leads to …
c Greed. People who are not employed by record labels or wireless carriers tend to think record labels and wireless carriers are greedy. (Shock!) This greed will lead to fallout in a number of areas: 1) Content publishers without something special are going to be squeezed out by greedy carriers and record labels that will make deals directly with each other. 2) Cover tones will be used to get around master recordings by the original artists if artists and their record labels get too greedy. 3) Voice tones will be pushed by celebrities trying to get some incremental revenue while going around their `greedy’ record labels.
The bottom line: There is the smell of much money to be made in mobile music, and a plethora of companies are aiming for a stake in the industry. Rock on!
