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Thanks to those nice people at Zest I spent yesterday evening at an interesting seminar organised by Music Tank – a London music industry body ran by the Uni of Westminster. Some interesting attendees and discussion. Didn’t change my world but it’s useful to hear what’s hot (and not). Sadly it feels like the music industry, correction the Majors are heading down the same road they went down when the internet started, namely NoIdea Avenue. The only difference with the mobile internet is that that P2P distributed privacy is not going to happen for some time as mobile data costs are too high and the labels have two new friends(and foes) in their ecosystem – mobile operators and handset manufacturers. I just feel sorry for the artists and the fans.

Omnifone (MusicStation) got a lot of mentions – mobile music subscription with content from major labels and some indies (Beggers). Some details below having done a bit of digging

• It’s another DRM music store. Great, that’s just what this world and consumers really need
• Tracks you download will not incur data charges (which is good I guess)
• Subscribers will pay £2.99 euros weekly and the service will be pre-installed on operators’ handsets
• Claims to have over 30 operator deals worldwide.
• Launching in the UK with Vodafone pre-installed on selected number of new phones and the app made available to download for existing vodafone subscribers
• Musiwave providing the mobile backend It’s DRM. Challenge is, how will they sell it?

Some quotes, stats & links

• Twilight WAP is one of the UK’s biggest WAP sites…I’d never heard of it
• Last Qtr 07 – MusicWave reported that full track download revenue > than ringtones for the first time.
• 13.4% of tracks on mobile users side loaded tracks on to their device (seems v high to me)
• 5% of OASIS SMS subscribers who received a text about the new album went on to buy the album (how did they measure this?)
• Fans happy to give mobile details – trick is to offer a mobile carrot e.g. exclusive content or tone or image?
• “Bluecasting works but do it at pinch points e.g. queue. Not in the main stadium as no one can hear their phone bleep!
• Most operators now source mobile and desktop content via one or two aggregators. But no single aggregator dominating platform or territory
• Indies only receive 10-30p of a mobile track that retails at 1.50 (according to Richard Wheeler from Beggers)
• Future mobile ‘biz models’ may involve
• content for contact details (transaction may not be just about selling the song)
• content may be free to the user but someone is paying through sponsorship e.g. brand X buys 20K tracks wholesale and gives them away to consumers via mobile.
• Total Music (Universal/ US) – get hardware makers or cell carriers to absorb the cost of a roughly $5-per-month subscription fee so consumers get a device with all-you-can-eat music that’s essentially free. Music companies would collect the subscription fee, while hardware makers theoretically would move many more players…But more DRM me thinks.
• We like Alfie from moblog – sensible comment and opinion
• Indie Mobile - company helping small labels do stuff on mobile

Meeker the grand-mother of Internet analysts annual report
40 pages of sensible analysis and comment

http://seesmic.com/
The French entrepreneur’s video start up – billed as twitter meets youTube

A recent trip to Mobile2.0 in San Fran I learned a thing or two about the US market – a kind of mobile 101 for Europeans [Not from the conference speakers or panels but from chit chat in the breaks]
Feels like while the US has lagged behind US and Asia in terms of mobile “service innovation” and i used the term service broadly they seem to be waking up and I suspect will begin to catch up very quickly.

Anyway – now for my 101.
I’ve not corroborated all points here but thought these were kind of interesting for anyone offering anything to do with mobile in the US

1. In the US it costs that same to call a landline as a mobile. So incentive to use text is less for kids
2. You pay to receive texts and send texts
3. Cost of texts was recently increased by all carriers from 15 to 20cents (i think, need to check this).
4. Pay-as-you-go doesn’t exist at the same level seen in Europe unless and I quote “you’re a terrorist or evading tax”
5. ‘Bundles’ and bolt-ons to customise your bill to your usage pattern seems under-developed
6. You can’t buy a “SIM only” i
7. Most US handsets don’t have the little clips you can hang silly stuff from. e.g. phone charms etc…and more people seem to wear them in holsters than you see in Europe (personal observation of the latter)
8. US kids not as big on wallpaper, ring tones etc…
9. Flat rate data tariffs not very common – but sales of all you can eat GPS cards for your laptop have been very successful for some carriers

MediaGuardian’s Jemima Kiss  interviews one of Twitter’s founders, Ev Williams. Big points from my POV include:

1. “it’s in it’s infancy” – big defence of the services’ early version. Ambitions to make it a ‘functional, personal tool’. Will it cross the chasm? is Facebook status sufficient function for the ‘masses’? Do they need to be mass market?
2. Idea came about 17months ago, now has 350K users amongst the early adopter audience. [6 or 7 months post SXSW, now  talking to mainstream media like the Guardian)
3. “Users need a critical mass of friends, and then the real conversations begin”
4. B2b Take up. 80 sites reportedly, “MTV has also experimented with offering stars like Timbaland his own Twitter channel during its video music awards; it’s a very efficient, practical and quite intimate way of reaching fans”
5. Future developments “A group feature is being developed, a better way of browsing a user’s history, and there are also some long-awaited plans to monetise the service. The strategy will involve branded channels, so companies like Woot would pay to reach those very valuable, loyal user”\
6. Great idea, where’s the biz model? “coming soon”