Music Ally

Vodafone Group has announced that it has signed up more than 450,000 customers for its music subscription services since agreeing DRM-free deals with all the major labels last year.

The operator says it now has a catalogue of more than two million MP3 tracks, and plans to increase this to more than six million in 2010. But it’s the 450,000 figure that it’s trumpeting loudest, saying it now has the largest number of paying music subscribers in Europe.

Vodafone says it signed up more than 100,000 customers to its music services in December alone, in its eight largest European markets. The operator is selling 10-track monthly MP3 bundles, alongside unlimited access subscription services.

“We are really excited by our customers’ reaction to these great music offers,” says Vodafone’s Lee Epting. “We expect to see continued growth in our music service subscriptions driven by the increase in smartphone use, with their worry-free data tariffs and great value add-ons such as music bundles.”

All four major labels have hailed the news, with UMG’s Francis Keeling saying the operator is “demonstrating leadership” in the music subscriptions field, while WMG’s Eric Daugan says that the figures “demonstrate the opportunities created when mobile companies and music labels are aligned in offering easy, instant access to content, in ways that cater for a variety of fan behaviour”.

Vodafone Spain has launched a new all-you-can-eat flat-rate data tariff for its customers, which includes unlimited access to music. Customers pay €13.92 (including VAT) a month for the offering, which gives them access to music from all the majors and various independents.

The service uses DRM to ensure that songs stop working when the user stops paying. It’s powered by RealNetworks rather than Vodafone’s existing unlimited music partners Omnifone, which will add fuel to the rumours that the relationship between the two ‘fones is drawing to a close.

Existing Vodafone flat-rate mobile users will get the new service automatically.

Vodafone has announced that it’s to sell DRM-free MP3 tracks from three of the four major labels – UMG, Sony and EMI – through its mobile and PC digital music stores.

The deal covers a million tracks in all, including artists like Coldplay, Britney Spears, Duffy, Lady GaGa and The Fray. The tracks will be sold through the Vodafone Music Store, and customers who’ve already bought those songs in WMA format from Voda will be able to upgrade them to MP3 at no extra cost.

That last detail is significant, given that Apple has been charging iTunes customers additional fees to upgrade their DRM’d files to iTunes Plus DRM-free ones. Voda has kept some details back – it only says that the DRM-free music will be available “through a number of Vodafone countries by the summer”.

One of the big news areas of the Mobile World Congress show was expected to be the launch of a bunch of handsets running Google’s Android operating system, but so far they’ve been thin on the ground. That looks likely to change today – HTC is apparently launching a new model called Magic, exclusively with Vodafone. It’s the follow-up to the company’s first Android phone, the G1, which was released through T-Mobile. Google has called a press conference for midday today, which is when the device is expected to be unveiled.
Source: VentureBeat – http://tinyurl.com/ddbbxs

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.

(more…)

It’s a big month Down Under for Omnifone. The mobile music firm launched its MusicStation service with Vodafone in New Zealand last week, and today has gone live with Voda in Australia, boasting that it’s the country’s first unlimited mobile music download service.

It’s launching with a catalogue of over a million tracks, and will cost AU$2.75 a week ($2.30). All four major labels are on board, along with local firms Destra, Shock, Liberation Music and All Killer, among others.

“Today’s announcement is a huge leap forward for the Australian music industry,” says Karen Paterson, head of Live services at Vodafone Australia. At launch, the service works on eight handsets only, according to Vodafone’s website.

Vodafone has launched a new mobile music download store in the UK, which takes the form of an application sitting on the user’s phone. It’s selling a la carte tracks starting at £0.99, with albums starting at £5.99. (more…)