[MobileMusiCon@CTIA] EMI Turns on The Music

(by Dana Blankenhorn): (A report from MobileMusiCon, the mobile music conferece held at CTIA on Wednesday) It was a big week for Ted Cohen, senior VP for digital delivery and distribution with EMI.

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For the first time his big boss, North America EMI chairman David Munns, had come to his domain as keynote speaker for MobileMusiCon. And afterward Cohen led Munns on a brief tour of the show floor, “Everything he needed to see in a half-hour.” Afterward Cohen was ebullient. “He ‘got it,'” Cohen said of his boss. “He really ‘got it.'”

What Munns got was the idea that, if mobile phones replicate their Asian and European success in the U.S., they can turn the whole industry around. “The industry has trended up the last few months but from its lowest point in 20 years,” Munns noted, blaming the usual suspects (piracy) and some unusual ones (changing tastes).

His big hope lies in the ardent fans his product produces. “When fans are in the zone they want everything an artist puts out and they want it urgently. You need to be the first with the live track, the message from the band, the t-shirt, the show tickets, the ring tone, and you want it all right now.”

It’s not a cell phone, in other words. It’s a sell phone. Munns cited lots of success stories. Motorola sponsored a tour by the band Yellow Card. Jane’s Addiction did a flash mob based on text messages. “We’re using mobile to create communities around artists. The Vines use a code to sign up for premiums. Mobile tie-ins are becoming standard for new releases.”

And that’s just the start. “The potential is enormous.” Ringtones, ringbacks, and especially “ringtunes” (Munn’s phrase), which are given other names by the other music companies.

“We are on the verge of making music available anywhere transactions take place,” he enthused. “We are building a new kind of global supply chain that lets us release a song or artist immediately around the world.” It’s an expensive infrastructure, however, but he wants the market to pay back the investment handsomely. “Some feel the price on mobile should be less than on other media � why?

What does it all add up to? Munn “gets it” in that he gets its profit potential. Consumers will pay � and pay and pay � because mobile is a channel that content owners can control, absolutely.

While Munn talked repeatedly about “consumer control” and “thinking first about the consumer’s needs” he was, when questioned, unyielding on the industry’s cross-purposed priorities. Twice he was offered horror stories, of people trying to sell mobile music and being stopped by lawyers for mechanical rights or performance rights holders, and all he said in reply was “it’s complicated.”

He didn’t apologize for it, he didn’t promise any of the complexity or the greed would go away. “It’s complicated.” The applause after the question period was far more restrained than that following the speech he read.

Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the “Interactive Age Daily” for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.

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