Digital music's popularity is soaring. Between last Christmas and the New Year alone, 20 million tracks were downloaded from Apple's iTunes and other download retailers, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
This startling figure reflects a huge development in the market for music downloads.
Figures recently released by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) show that 420 million single tracks were downloaded from the internet legally in 2005, while the combined sales of music downloaded from the internet and mobile phones tripled to USD 1.1 billion in 2005 from USD 380 million in 2004.
While most people who download music do so on to their computers, many now choose to have tracks streamed to their mobile phones. IFPI says that mobile downloads now account for 40 percent of all digital music sales.
Analysts believe that this is just the beginning of something big. "For the first time, there's been large-scale, full-track downloads over mobile phones," Mark Mulligan, a digital music analyst at Jupiter Research, told Dow Jones Newswire recently.
Encouraged by this new trend, many mobile phone operators have already jumped on the digital music bandwagon. So far, they have not been able to make much money from their services, but this is expected to change as more and more customers start to realize the benefits of downloading music on the go.
Taking advantage of this new scenario, Ericsson has developed a personal music portal, which is the most widely commercially deployed music service among operators today. The portal is based on the Service Delivery Platform for media services (SDP Media), which enables operators to easily and quickly launch ring tunes and full-track download services at low cost.
Operators buying Ericsson's music solution will be able to provide their customers with 12,000 ring tunes and 200,000 full-track downloads from the European music library of EMI, following a deal between the two companies in January.
Sony BMG and Universal are also contributing content to Ericsson´s music portal and recently Warner Music signed a similar deal. It enables people who subscribe to Ericsson's personal music portal to download ring tones, artist logos and autographs.
"We see tremendous potential in the mobile sales channel, and in Ericsson we have an ideal partner to help us maximize this opportunity internationally," says Jay Durgan, senior vice president of Strategic Partnerships and Business Development at Warner Music. "Together we assist operators in introducing consumers to a whole new music experience."
