Mforma Group Inc. is branching out from the wireless gaming arena and waltzing onto the crowded dance floor of mobile music.
The Bellevue, Wash.-based entertainment publisher this week is expected to unveil a licensing deal with music-industry magazine Billboard to provide news, artist information and a music storefront to North American wireless users. Billboard Mobile, scheduled to launch next month, will offer free access to charts and a storefront selling ringtones, full-track downloads and CDs; a premium service will include more detailed offerings including reviews, concert information, trivia and games.
The announcement marks a major step for Mforma, which until recently published only mobile gaming titles. Late last year, the privately held company touted a similar branding deal with Marvel, announcing plans to build a line of content and services around the comic book empire.
Mforma said the service will be integrated with the magazine’s Web site, which reportedly draws 2.5 million visitors a month. The two companies will collaborate on promotional and marketing efforts.
The buzz surrounding mobile music has grown deafening in recent weeks, with behemoths Nokia Corp. and Microsoft Corp. recently announcing they’ll team with Loudeye Corp. to deliver a mobile music platform to deliver full-track downloads to PCs and handsets. Mforma is hoping to use Billboard’s name and a user-friendly interface to entice carriers to put the offering on their content decks.
“One of the things I’ve noticed about music services is that they don’t look so great,” said Tercek, Mforma’s executive vice president of programming and chief strategy officer. “The way you browse through the e-catalog to look for music is very cumbersome, very techie, and it has nothing to do with music as an extension of your lifestyle; your personality.”
Meanwhile, down the road in Seattle, software developer Melodeo has been developing its own delivery platform for mobile phones and PCs also set to be announced this week. Whereas the planned Microsoft/Nokia service allows a user to download to either platform, Melodeo’s service can deliver tunes to both a handset and a computer at once.
The platform first launched in December through Spanish operator Telefonica Moviles Espana.
“Europe tends to be the market where a lot of these services launch first, but the U.S. is not far behind,” said Don Davidge, Melodeo’s senior vice president of sales and marketing. “I think what you’ll find-particularly in Europe-is that every single operator is in the process of planning and purchasing (services from) a mobile music vendor at this point. A couple have already launched services.”
But what form the relationships between carriers and mobile services take has yet to be determined. Some operators are inking deals directly with labels in an effort to handle music offerings in-house. And while some carriers may choose to deal with only one music platform, others may look to provision a number of different services and platforms, presenting subscribers with a diverse menu of brands and content.
“Today, content organizers at major mobile operators are stretched to the breaking point,” handling everything from music to video to games, said Tercek. Just as carriers are looking for outside help to provision mobile content, the music business-which is still smarting from an inability to exploit the rise of the Internet-is going to great lengths to capitalize on opportunities in wireless.
“If you’re in the music business, and would like to sell your product, it’s a very good thing for you to be in business with a mobile operator,” Tercek said. “The mobile phone is a micropayment transaction system; as a result, this is a great place to do transactions of all types.”
