GoMo Mobile Search News

Orange turns up music services with Radio FG

Rating: its all about the Soundtribes or Pikeo and reality radio, man

Orange has teamed up with Radio FG to offer mobile and internet services to users with exclusive editorial and music content.

What?
Basically, Orange customers can now listen to Radio FG live on the mobile device or the Internet when it is broadcast over Liveradio.

What else?
Radio FG can also plug into Orange flagship services Soundtribes and Pikeo.

Soundtribes?

Alltel chooses mSpot for over the air music synching

Rating: mspot music

mSpot who?
mSpot is a mobile music and radio provider. It offers an over the air mobile music to PC synching service.

Alltel

Silverback Media Partners with digital music provider Puretracks for music and content promotion

Rating: one musical PIN

Silverback Media, a mobile marketing advertising agency with operations in North America and Europe, has entered in a new three year partnership with Toronto-based Puretracks Inc ("Puretracks"), a North American digital music provider.

Let's all jump on the OTA music bandwagon

Rating: music social network sites are Mr Murdoch's next obvious step
by Tony Dennis

The news that in the USA, the market leading mobile operator, AT&T Wireless, has hooked up with leading music site, Napster, shouldn't surprise anyone. After all, market watchers of the likes of Screen Digest are forecasting that the global OTA (over-the-air) music download market will be worth around $2.28 billion (£1.11 billion) by 2012 compared to about £0.1 billion 2006.
The first question everybody asks about downloading music to mobile phones is whether there's actually a market for it. I would argue that there definitely is one. The more important question is whether people will buy it from an operator's portal or go direct to an independent site. The latter looks like the more likely scenario.

Podcast with Graeme Smith VP Marketing at Phling!

Rating: Phling it, baby

I had a bit of a fright just now as I called a US number to get hold of Phling!’s VP of Marketing Graeme Smith as I was hit with a Scottish accent (I think) not the US accent I expected.
But the fright didn’t last long and I had a quick 3 minutes Hot Buttons podcast with Graeme and I asked him:

1. What is Phling!?
2. But there are a lot of music providers out there – what is your value proposition?
3. So what is the business model – how do you make your money?

You can listen to the podcast Download phling.mp3

– but once again its better to download that to try and play it because of some Vista bug that I have.

Related:
http://pushingthebarrier.typepad.com/pushing_the_barrier/2007/03/oxy_systems_phl.html
http://www.gomonews.com/pushing_the_barrier/2007/07/phling-and-edip.html

Vodafone rocks DJ with RealNetworks

Rating: well I thought Radio DJ was a flop – but its led to a partnership so maybe it’s not that bad?

By Bena Roberts

Vodafone gets loved up with and enters into a multi-year global partnership. Also RealNetworks just acquired Sony NetServices (today). It was Sony NetServices that has the Vodafone Radio DJ deal with Vodafone.

From the press release
"Vodafone is excited to be partnering with RealNetworks, helping our customers enjoy their favourite music, from anywhere and at anytime," said Dirk Wierzbitzki, Global Director of Consumer Product Marketing, Vodafone. "Real offers Vodafone a unique combination of industry-leading technology and the ability to deliver compelling entertainment services that enhance our customers' mobile experience. We look forward to working with them."
"As the world's leading mobile communications company, Vodafone is the ideal partner to deepen Real's presence in the global mobile marketplace," said John Giamatteo, President of Technology Products and Solutions and International Operations, RealNetworks. "We are uniquely suited to offer Vodafone customers a compelling and easy-to-use personalized music experience that takes full advantage of the reach and speed of Vodafone's superior 3G networks across Europe."

What we think“Vodafone is excited” – well lets just hope this leads to a better quality of music DJ service moving forward.

Cingular rocks and rolls on

Rating: a blast

(by Louise Wells)

There¹s no doubt about it, Cingular is on a roll. Its latest quarterly
figures (released on 18th October) showed it had added 1.4m new subscribers
to reach a total of 58.7m. It has added an impressive 6.4m in the last 12
months, all the more impressive because churn has been reduced to 1.8%, down
from 2.3% a year ago. Clearly Cingular has managed to swallow its US$41bn
acquisition of AT&T Wireless without choking.

According to the Financial Times, Cingular¹s average monthly revenue per
user is US$49.76. Now this staggeringly successful joint venture between
BellSouth and AT&T is rolling out its 3G networks and has announced its
intention to have the highest margins in the industry by the end of 2007, in
part through increased data traffic, which currently accounts for 13% of
monthly ARPU.

It¹s not surprising then that the operator has just announced a raft of
tempting new services to kick start data traffic. The most eye-catching (or
should that be ear?) is Cingular Music, which it offers the largest
collection of mobile music available on handsets from the biggest music
retailers as well as the online subscription music content from Napster and
Yahoo! Cingular Music is also integrated with eMusic, which sells tracks in
the MP3 format. Cingular teamed up with Microsoft to incorporate Windows
Media Digital Rights Management into certain handsets.

Cingular says all of this is available through a single click to access the
music and related content. "Cingular Music is our answer to a fragmented
marketplace that until now has not fully taken into account the user
experience," says Jim Ryan, vice president of consumer data services,
Cingular Wireless.

The bad news is that the range of phones is so small: Cingular SYNC by
Samsung, LG CU500, Sony Ericsson W810i, Sony Ericsson W300i and Cingular
3125, but no doubt that will be remedied soon. Otherwise, it should be a
blast.

Round of Applause: Yahoo! Messenger

Rating: Yeah! Baby

In order to understand mobile, it’s often necessary to go back to basics and understand the source. Hence, as Yahoo! Go continues its assault of the mobile space in order to connect lives… I met up with Isabelle Wies, Senior Product Manager of Yahoo! for Mail and Messaging, at Yahoo!’s offices in London yesterday.

The tour around Yahoo! messaging was an eye-opener and a joy. It’s easy for mobile application developers and service providers to think “inside of the box” and a revisit of instant messenger on the PC was a vivid awakening.

In short, the Internet Yahoo! messenger experience is “hot” – no, it’s even better than hot it’s on fire. The experience is what is necessary to fuel the success of mobile services. But it’s clear that mobile is a long way behind the fixed experience – not because of style of service but due to the restrictions of the mobile device and the quality of the network.

Isabelle took me through a new range of plug-in services and features including free voice calls. One feature did something many have tried to do but failed… I was speechless.

Yahoo!’s music search services are, in short, excellent. For the past 12 months I have seen mobile service white label offers, from companies such as Infospace and Medio Systems, all of which have been good. But the music search from Yahoo! Messenger on the Internet was superior.

Of course this is also a no-brainer as the Internet came first and the mobile Internet is still in its infancy. New services are delivering but need to find their feet in mobile.
However, it’s a great place for any application developer on mobile to start, review and get back to the drawing board. It really is all about music, recommendation and discovery, and Yahoo! Messenger has it…

Editors Note: over the next few weeks I will be meeting some key executives at Yahoo! in the mobile, search and connected live space. Podcasts of all the thought leaders will appear on Hot Buttons, and analysis of Yahoo!’s convergence from the Internet to Mobile is also penned in the editorial calendar.

listen to podcast here