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MSpot launches consumer music site for mobile commerce

Mobile music and entertainment company mSpot Inc. has launched its first consumer Web site for mobile commerce.

The site at http://www.mSpot.com features the Make-UR-Tones service, which lets consumers edit, buy and download custom ringtones to their mobile devices. The ringtone service is also available on Sprint, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Alltel Wireless, U.S. Cellular, Boost Mobile, MetroPCS and nTelos as a downloadable application.

"Currently, the majority of mobile commerce takes place within the carriers' closed ecosystem and carriers are also key to discovery and marketing," said Daren Tsui, CEO of mSpot, Palo Alto, CA. "We see tremendous market momentum towards open platforms such as the various app stores.

"This will hopefully mean more favorable revenue shares and a less stringent approval process for vendors," he said. "In addition, the mobile Web is experiencing rapid growth thanks to the iPhone and other mobile browsers. Mobile discovery and marketing may become similar, although not exact, to its brethren PC."

MSpot offers North American carriers music, radio, video and custom ringtone products for their mobile customers through products like mSpot Radio, mSpot Movies, Music Sync and Make-UR-Tones. mSpot's target demographic is consumers in their teens to mid-thirties.

To buy ringtones on the new consumer site, customers first select a track from mSpot's song collection then employ the Make-UR-Tones editor to select up to 30 seconds of their favorite part of the song.

That edited cut can then be downloaded as a customized ringtone for $2.99.

MSpot.com offers more than 400,000 song titles to choose from, making it one of the largest ringtone collections in North America.

The company claims that its catalog is about ten times the size of most other legal ringtone services.
Songs include those from music labels EMI, Universal Music, Warner Music, Sony Music, Ingrooves and IRIS.

MSpot.com also features lyrics, artist bios and recommendations for its target demographic -- music fans.
According to Juniper Research, worldwide mobile music revenues will reach $14 billion in 2011.

For its part, mSpot has completed more than 500 ports to mobile phones supported across 10 North American carriers and in 2008 saw its subscriber base increase to more than four million customers -- a 260 percent jump since 2007.

"Our strategy going forward is to continue to offer applications and services consumers want through our carrier distribution and directly via the Web," Mr. Tsui said. "We currently do not have a WAP version, but WAP distribution is a high priority for us in 2009.

"We already do advertising on carriers' decks but have no plans to work with third-party mobile sites," he said.