mobiliser.org | intelligence for wireless executives

The mobile music industry already offers more than downloading ringtones to personalise your handset. To prove that mobiliser introduces you to leading companies in the areas of mobile music distribution, marketing, ringtone production and rearranging as well as mobile music applications ready to produce groovy electronic beats anywhere you are. The companies touched upon include Apeera, AX6, Layer 8, M-Zone and Nanoloop. The piece also peepshows our favourite p2p music sharing application.

As you all know Karaoke is very popular in Japan. But not only in dedicated spaces where you hang with your friends, eat, drink and sing but also on your mobile phone. The standard 16-voice ringtone formats in Japanese handsets are basically music-only and, thus, the perfect rhythm combo for any ambitious Karaoke student wishing to impress his gang with newly acquired sing along skills. Let me know when you find the first mobile Karaoke lesson in Europe.

Listening to mobile music does not drive network traffic

It's always good to have a definition at hand: Mobile music refers to the delivery and rendering of instrumental and vocal sounds on a wireless device. As research firm Ovum has pointed out in their recent report, "Mobile Music: Singing our way to the Bank" (August 2002), mobile music is already a reality: Depending on the hardware you carry around you can already listen to CDs, MP3s, minidisks, cassettes or radio while on the move. When it comes to music on mobile phones, however, most of us in Europe are still listening to monophonic ringtones that easily get on your nerves because people rely on the omnipresent Nokia default ringers or don't know how to switch their phones to silent mode. How often did you try to answer your phone when the guy next to you was actually receiving the call?

Counting all storage media and delivery channels music is a multi-billion Euro industry. Though comparably small, ringtones themselves already make for a huge and valuable mobile music market. Music is intensely emotional and personal and a joint point of interest for many friendships which fits with all that mobile communications represent. Still, Ovum argues that the capability of listening to music over a mobile handset will not automatically drive demand. Music delivered over a cellular network to a mobile handset is simply one new channel seeking the user’s attention. It is super expensive when compared with other channels, while CD burning and file sharing are setting ever-lower price benchmarks.

Additionally, the popularity of ringtones is not about listening to music but rather about personalising your mobile phone. It is more a statement of peer identity and fashion than a music application. In contrast, the ability to download and play back music files over a mobile phone is a different market – one that is already populated with cheap, simple and (on the whole) better mobile alternatives.

Thus, being able to download music over the wireless network will probably not be the ultimate killer application and sound experience. It will be out of reach for a long time due to slow data transfer rates and expensive pricing of wireless bandwidth. If the cost of distribution is higher than the price for the music itself only the insane will download it over the air. So be patient until operators introduce megacheap MB prices - might take a while, though.

However, if you open your mind to music downloads in data hotspots or, for example, over new music outlets such as Bluetooth-enabled cigarette vending machines (think Marlboro Music) you see that the future of wireless music file transfers is already "around the corner".

Face2face file sharing is music for your ears and your wallet

Although still in early prototype phase, my favourite mobile music application is face2face file sharing and it goes like this: You carry around your portable data disk that features a display and file manager to easily share whatever you like with everybody in WLAN or Bluetooth reach while no authority is able to ever track it. If people are close enough to each other music continues to be free, not 1 song at a time but 1 GB at a time, depending on the capacity of the new generation of mobile storage media (think fuel-cell powered IBM Microdrives 2.0 and you'll get the picture).

Alternatively, you can share the URLs and access rights to files stored on the server by SMS, MMS, E-Mail or Instant Messaging. Such a client-server application is based on a downloadable Java client with an incorporated file manager. After your friend has passed on to you the URL and login/password, you can click through and access the file in the closest hotspot or from your PC at home that features a flat rate fixed Internet connection.

The French company Apeera appears to develop client-server technology suited to support this application scenario. Apeera targets mobile network operators with a product that will increase storage capacity and enable Digital Rights Management (DRM). Apeera aims at enabling operators to manage peer-to-peer sharing, i.e. the sharing of content such as games, ringtones, logos and photographs among mobile subscribers. At the same time, the company will provide operators with a data repository that will allow users to remotely store content without using their handset memory.

According to Apeera's CEO Bruno Suard, the company's goal is to allow end-users to pass on content by the push of a button, encouraging the mass-market adoption of different technologies. The key difference from the type of peer-to-peer sharing practised on Web sites such as Napster is that operators will have more control, and will thus be able to deal with content that comes with a copyright and must therefore be paid for each time it is used. Suard recommends to offer the basic service for free to users with limited storage, then charge for more storage.

Market the music to your audience across all channels

Did you ever watch a boy or girl group concert on TV? If yes, you can easily imagine how real music fans overspend without limits on purchasing music and accessories or other paraphernalia. Ringtones, mobile pictures, concert tickets or competitions for backstage passes etc. will generate a lot of mobile network traffic, premium service consumption and opt-in mobile marketing messages.

A good representative of mobile music marketing engines is a new venture called AX6 co-founded by Hubert Gertis. AX6 is still working behind the curtains and will start their public beta test around early 2003 (by then you should surf this URL: www.ax6.com). iARM (interactive Audience Relationship Management) is the Apple-inspired name of their mobile music marketing platform. Its value proposition is basically a multi-channel customer relationship management system to manage the acquisition and retention of music fans across all digital channels including Web, WAP, i-mode, E-Mail, SMS or MMS.

The team around Gertis targets iARM to small and medium sized labels and artists that are encouraged to use the system also for opening new revenue streams such as premium rate SMS or MMS for selling and distributing text, ringtones, logos, pictures, concert tickets or coupons for discounts on CDs in record stores. The goal of any artist and label should be to build and manage direct digital communication channels with their fan base. These cost-efficient channels are will suited to market new music and merchandise, draw people to events and answer the questions of the fan base.

I wish I had more robots on my ringtone production line

According to Steve Myers, mobile music expert at Tokyo-based Layer 8 Technologies, it appears that all Japanese carriers allow you to attach ringtones to E-Mails but the size is severely limited - something like 2 KB, which means that only the most trivial of melodies can actually be used as attachments. Moreover, no carrier allows ringtones to be uploaded to a server. If such a p2p server existed and became well known, it probably would reduce ringtone revenues substantially.

While the ringtone business is a big business it is also a hard day's work to create ringtones due to the time consuming, manual ringtone production process. First, you have to convert an MP3 file to MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) manually by ear, i.e. listening to the song and recomposing it in MIDI. Then you have to convert the MIDI master to the specific ringtone formats used by each handset maker and operator with the help of a suitable file format conversion software.

Steve Myers explains the reasons for the complicated production steps: "With MP3-MIDI, the difficulty is that you're trying to take data that's in the format of a sound wave and convert it to data that's in the format of messages like 'play a C#2 tone with a saxophone sound for one second'. Generally, a lot will be lost in this kind of conversion. With MIDI-ringtone, the problem is that MIDI can handle much more than most ringtone formats are capable of. There are many restrictions on ringtones, such as length, file size, instruments, and these vary from model to model."

Thus, there is a big demand for an optimised and very automated ringtone production process. The dream of ringtone providers right now is to have a single software product that converts a MIDI file to all of the different formats in one go. This would give providers tremendous cost savings. Smelling the business opportunity Layer 8 is currently working on such a product, and while it can certainly save providers money, it is still a long way from the ideal.

Adding value to the ringtones sitting on your device, Tokyo-based entertainment software company M-ZoNE has launched an application to have more fun with the ringtones you already own. Their application "Arrange GoGo" is capable of rearranging ringtones. Up to now, the software is only optimised for Qualcomm's BREW technology as it turns out to execute faster than a comparable Java application. Thus, Arrange GoGo is only offered for BREW-enabled phones sold by the Japanese operator KDDI. Yumu Tanaka, M-ZoNE's CEO, points out that Arrange GoGo automatically arranges ringtones to any musical style such as Reggae, Rock, Dance, Japanese Folk or Techno.

Nanoloop pioneers mobile music production on Nintendo's Game Boy and Symbian handsets

His name is Oliver Wittchow, he lives in Hamburg, next to Berlin the global centre of music software development, and he is a distinct pioneer when it comes to squeezing groovy sounds out of your keitai. He called his first product Nanoloop, a perfect name for the small digital music maker Nanoloop in fact is. Nanoloop is a synthesizer and sequencer for Nintendo's Game Boy. As it is a pure software product and stored on a normal game cartridge, it can be used on any Game Boy. It provides all necessary functions to produce nice electronic music, so no further hardware is needed. Originally started as an academic students project, Nanoloop is only available directly from Oliver's web site.

To prove that Nanoloop really produces nice electronic music, the record label Disco Bruit published the compilation album Nanoloop 1.0 which features music that had been produced exclusively with Nanoloop software and a Game Boy. Wittchow loves the Game Boy and believes it offers a perfect form factor for making music with a small device as it has a big display and just the few necessary control buttons to play games or control Nanoloop. The coolest show possible with Nanoloop is to hook up your Game Boy to the sound system of your favourite club and perform a rocking live act in the middle of the dance floor - just turn up the volume and hit the little magic buttons of your Nanoloop-powered Game Boy.

Now Wittchow is up for writing music creation software for mobile phones. After having played around with J2ME, BREW and even Microsoft's mobile platform - very courageous, indeed - he is now settling down on Symbian devices. The reason is that you have easy access to all hardware-based sound generation capabilities and can code the application in native C. Let's see how long it takes until DJ competitions are actually performed by clubbers rocking down the house with their pocket music makers.