Early innings for mobile music, say Digital Music Forum panelists

February 27, 2008

Chris Phenner is senior vice president of business development at Thumbplay

NEW YORK – Opening up the walled gardens from the carrier side is going to help the mobile music sector generate more revenue.

This was one of the key points at the eighth annual Digital Music Forum East held yesterday in New York. Panelists discussed developments in mobile music, such as openness, speed, engagement and immediacy in a panel titled, “The Future of Mobile Music.”

“If you look at it, North America on-deck is higher than off-deck, inversely to the rest of the world,” said Rachna Bhasin, vice president of business development at Dell-Zing. “It’s all about choice. Sometimes I might want permanent ownership versus temporary ownership. It’s really about letting the consumer pick, today and tomorrow.”

Ms. Bhasin said that anything that helps the consumer connect and shortens that bridge is a good thing.

“We’re working a bunch of things, it’s really about how do we empower,” she said. “We’re of the belief that the consumer is king. Let them pick the services that apply to them.”

The panelists agreed that mobile music is still in its infancy and that it will take off in the next couple of years.

“We are in the very early innings in mobile and music,” said Dorrian Porter, CEO of Mozes. “The Internet is about getting whatever you want in milliseconds and if that’s the test, we have a long way to go. We are starting to build those channels of information between channels and fans.”

Mozes is focused on what works on all phones, such as text messaging and voice, per Mr. Porter.

In Europe and Asia the mobile device often is the only online connection that some consumers have.

“When you start thinking about sources of content and subscribing to sources of content directly and cutting out the middle man, I think that’s a big area for the next five years,” Mr. Porter said.

Matt Schwartz, manager of music programming and business development at Verizon Wireless, said that mobile music will face explosive growth as it becomes easier and faster.

“One of the changes we’re making for content is to bundle a ringtone and a ring-back tone together,” Mr. Schwartz said.

“We are the first carrier to do this,” he claimed.

The company is actually exploring DRM-free music, because Verizon want its customers to easily manage their music.

Dave Ulmer, senior director of entertainment products at Motorola Media Solutions, talked about some of the recent developments in mobile music such the recently announced Rokr E8, with a keypad that adjusts to turn the phone into a music player, camera and so on.

“It’s all about the value proposition, when the consumers see the value in being able to get any song they want at any time, they’ll go that way,” Mr. Ulmer said.

Chris Phenner, senior vice president of business development at Thumbplay, stressed the importance of personalization.

“We’ve been taken by surprise by the high customer acquisition [for Thumbplay],” Mr. Phenner said. “We work with three of the largest music applications on Facebook such as iLike.

“There are a couple of really exciting things happening that are going to play out in a big way in 2009,” he said.