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Making music mobile

January 26, 2004

For nearly 40 years, music professionals have been starting the New Year with a trip to Cannes to spot emerging talents, make contacts and keep abreast of the latest developments in their industry. This week, some 9000 music professionals are gathering there again for the world's leading international music market, MIDEM.

What's new this year is Ericsson's presence. In fact, an entire section of MIDEM, the Mobile Village, has been dedicated to mobile music, with several key players from the mobile industry.

 

Ericsson's Marcus Lannerbro says: "Our role at MIDEM is to create an awareness that the mobile channel is a viable choice for marketing, promotion, sales and distribution of music. We want to show that we can do it now. We also want to spread the word that Ericsson is the business partner and matchmaker to make all this happen."

 

The music and mobile industries have traditionally worked separately, but with more capable networks and better phones on the market, it is much easier for the music industry to start using mobile handsets to reach its audience.

 

"Our research shows that many users want to have access to music instantaneously," Lannerbro says. What better way than through a mobile phone?

 

Matchmaker
Ericsson wants the two industries to work more closely to find the best ways to make music-related services truly mobile.

 

Of course, Ericsson's interest is not purely altruistic. As the world leader in telecoms infrastructure, Ericsson benefits when mobile phone users start using their phones to download music information and songs: the more traffic generated in operators' networks, the more help they will need from companies such as Ericsson to cope with the increasing capacity requirements.

 

There are already several mobile music services on offer. One that Ericsson will show at MIDEM is M-USE, a collaboration between Ericsson and Sony Music. Ericsson hosts the platform for delivery of content to operators' networks while Sony Music provides the content. Vodafone Live in Switzerland is already offering this service today.

 

Another example on show at MIDEM is something called "music ring-back tone". Lannerbro explains: "This is where I might ring you and instead of hearing a recurring beep, I hear some music. You can personalize the service to have different songs for different callers. This kind of service is already in operation in many networks in Asia."

 

Ericsson also has a 2G and a 3G network running live at the conference.It will show a range of music-related services and the differences in quality between the two networks.

 

MIDEM runs from January 25 to 29.

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