Music Ally

Mobile payments firm mBlox recently announced plans for what it calls a `sender pays data trial’, under which content providers bundle together the data charge costs for mobile content so that consumers don’t have to worry about it.

It stemmed from the company’s research revealing that on certain mobile tariffs, UK consumers can pay up to £10 to download a single music track over-the-air off-portal.

Now mBlox has just announced that Fox Mobile Distribution has signed up to the trial, and will be offering customers zero-rated games and music. mBlox has also launched a special Zero Data Charge logo designed to let consumers know they won’t be stung when downloading a piece of content.

“It’s the solution to a set of problems that afflict everyone: operators, retailing companies and above all the consumer,” Andrew Bud, CEO of MBlox tells Music Ally. “For the consumer the fundamental problem is one of pricing transparency … If the consumer says – how much is this going to cost me it’s impossible for anyone to give them an answer. It’s such an impossible situation that it impedes off portal providers from growing any sort of business.”

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The Official Charts Company has revealed its first Official Mobile Downloads Chart, based on sales of full-track downloads to mobile phones in the UK. And it’s good news for Lily Allen, whose The Fear single is sitting proudly at top spot in the first weekly chart.

Eminem is second with Crack A Bottle, Lady GaGa is third with Just Dance, and the Top Ten is rounded out by tracks from The Prodigy, Pussycat Dolls, Kings of Leon, Alesha Dixon, U2, Beyonce and Kid Cudi Vs Crookers.

OCC says the chart has launched to coincide with its recently-unveiled iPhone application. “This new chart reflects the changing ways in which consumers are accessing a consuming music and underlines the Official Charts Company’s commitment to offering data on all types of music consumption,” says MD Martin Talbot.

It’s been a while since the last super-bullish analyst forecast, so raise a totally-full glass to Juniper Research, which predicts that global mobile music revenues will reach nearly $14.6 billion by 2013.

Its new report predicts a sharp fall in ringtone revenues that’ll be more than offset by growth in full track downloads, streaming music services and ring back tones.

It also suggests that many of the key hurdles to the adoption of full track services have been reduced, including handset form factor, memory constraints and a reduction in data costs.

The report’s optimism contrasts with the widely-reported pessimism in the industry around the current state of mobile music.

Verizon Wireless has expanded its promotional relationship with producer Timbaland, and has brought Research In Motion into the deal. Timbaland will be recording a series of music tracks with guest artists on Verizon’s Mobile Recording Studio Bus, and they’ll then be made available for free to BlackBerry Storm smartphone owners.

First up is Rihanna, who’s getting an exclusive remix of her Rehab single. More songs will follow in the coming months – although while they’ll debut for the Storm on a dedicated website, they’ll later be available to all Verizon customers via its V CAST music service.

The news is further evidence of BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion’s desire to engage more with the music industry – even if it’s not directly involved in this particular deal. BlackBerry co-CEO Jim Balsillie gave a keynote interview at MidemNet recently, although he could’ve done with a few announcements like this on the day.

Microsoft has been talking about its new MSN Mobile Music store in the UK, and defending its use of DRM for the full-track downloads, which cost £1.50 each yet can’t be transferred to or played on any other device (we reported on this earlier this week)

PC Pro asked why. “At the moment, to be honest with you, we don’t have the functionality in-house to provide a mechanism for transferring between mobile phones and PC,” said head of mobile Hugh Griffiths. “We’d like to have offered a fuller service, we weren’t in a position to do so for a number of reasons.”

When asked what happens if someone buys songs from MSN Mobile that are locked to their device, and then upgrades their handset six months later, his reply was simply: “Well, I think you know the answer to that”.

With talk of the industry shifting to “mobile music 2.0″ at MidemNet last weekend, perhaps we should label MSN Mobile “mobile music 0.5″.

Live from London, we’re liveblogging our own Mobile Music In The Dock event, for which we’ve gathered expert witnesses, canny prosecution and defence teams, and a raucous (we hope) jury to decide whether mobile music is living up to the industry’s expectations. Read on, and refresh for the latest entries…

18.35: We’re about to get underway, but here’s a rundown of who’s who tonight. The prosecutor is Jeremy Silver QC from Sibelius Software, while the defence counsel is Ralph Simon QC from the Mobile Entertainment Forum.

Expert witnesses include Paul Kenny (Global Head of Music, Vodafone), Tim Grimsditch (Global Product Marketing, Nokia Music), Mark Mulligan (Senior Analyst, Jupiter Research), Scott Cohen (Founder, The Orchard), Paul Lee (Deloitte) and Gary McClarnan (Sparklestreet).

The judge? Our own Paul Brindley. No, he’s not wearing a dusty wig. We did try to persuade him. Read on for the report of what happens, as it happens.

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Until recently, mobile wasn’t really an option for any website offering streaming music. Mobile browsers fall over at the first sight of Flash, for example, and even the Safari browser on Apple’s iPhone doesn’t support it. Bad luck if you’re one of the mushrooming number of streaming music sites.

One answer is to make a mobile application, as Imeem has announced this week for Google’s Android platform, and Last.fm and Pandora have launched for iPhone. But even MySpace still doesn’t offer its streaming music features in its mobile applications, focusing instead on the less-taxing social networking elements.

I met a company called Skyfire today at the Symbian Smartphone Show in London who have a mobile browser that CAN access these sites.

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It’s been a pretty good week for music ID service Shazam. Not only did it announce a new preload deal with Samsung and T-Mobile, but it also trumpeted the fact that its iPhone application has now been downloaded by more than 1.5 million people, tagging over 20 million tracks between them.

We caught up with Shazam CEO Andrew Fisher to talk about these deals, and how they affect the company’s wider strategy.

So, iPhone has been a success for you?

Usage is ramping up really nicely, with more than 1.5 million people downloading the application and becoming active users. And the 20 million calls to the service are a real testament to the fact that this is maturing as a whole consumer experience. It’s not just about ‘name that tune in the pub quiz’ any more’.

It’s richer: you can buy songs on iTunes, watch the YouTube videos, or use the camera to capture who you’re with at the moment of hearing that track, and create your own music memories. And on the music sales side, the good thing is that on iPhone, you’ve got pricing parity with the web, so there’s nothing to inhibit people from buying a song once they’ve discovered it. There’s no price disadvantage to them for transacting on the mobile.

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