[Guest]

Print this page...

Music Services: Directions for Mobile Operators

Record companies' business models have been rocked by slumping music sales worldwide, and revenue losses from the growth of illegal file sharing systems. While their copyrighted material has been distributed to a huge audience of younger people, the record companies have not earned any incremental revenue.

The market for music downloads has been jumpstarted by a number of factors, particularly the growth of successful, legal download services such as Apple Computer Inc.'s 'iTunes Music Store'. Meanwhile in Japan and South Korea, operators have introduced a number of music-related services including 'realtones' and ringback tones, services that have captured the imagination of subscribers in their markets.

Given slumping sales of music (and particularly singles), operators have advantages including youthful customers for whom music is important, customers that will be excited by new music-related phone customisation, and customers who want the latest music immediately, tailored to their tastes and with them everywhere they choose to be.

In this report, we profile a range of music-related themes, products, services and offers from the consumer electronics, Internet, retail and wireless market spaces. Highlights include:

• Coverage of headline trends in music sales and the growth of legal music download services
• A profile of "O2 Music", a personal music device and portal launched by O2 UK
• "Jukebox" from Eurotel Praha, an innovative music service supporting a range of handsets
• 'Ringback' tone services pioneered by SK Telecom & WiderThan in South Korea, more recently introduced by T-Mobile in the UK
• A summary of strengths and weakness of various music-related offering in the wireless arena, with a summary of outcomes, directions and key questions.

Price: EUR 2,500.00 / GBP 2,000.00

if you would like learn more about this report, or our other work in this topic area and how to subscribe, please contact us

1	Overview	1
2	Background	2
2.1	The Evolution of Music Consumption	2
2.2	'Traditional' Retail Stores	4
2.3	Legal Download Services	5
2.3.1	Apple iTunes Music Store	5
2.3.2	Sony Connect	6
2.3.3	Rhapsody/Listen.com	7
2.3.4	Napster 2.0	8
2.4	Illegal File Sharing Services	9
2.5	Encoding	9
3	Mobile Music Offers	10
3.1	O2 UK, Germany: 'O2 Digital Music Player'	10
3.1.1	Service Description	10
3.1.2	Implementation & Evolution	11
3.2	EuroTel Praha: 'Jukebox'	12
3.2.1	Service Description	12
3.2.2	Service Platform	12
3.2.3	Implementation & Evolution	13
3.3	Other European Operators	13
3.3.1	T-Mobile Germany, Austria, UK	13
3.3.2	Telenor Norway	14
3.4	Asian Operators	14
3.4.1	Japanese Operators	14
3.4.2	Ringback tones: SK Telecom South Korea & WiderThan	15
4	Directions	17
4.1	A Compelling, Addictive Proposition? Find the right mix for your market...	17
4.2	Hardware is important...	19
4.3	....as is the youth segment	20
4.4	Beware of unlikely competitors and unexpected changes in the market	21
4.5	What will make my music strategy different?	22