@ Media Summit: Mobile Music: The Issues For 2006

At the Media Summit in NYC last week, a very well moderated panel on mobile music and the revenue generation issues. Among the panelists included Thomas Gewecke, SVP, Digital Business Group, Sony BMG; Mike Brochu, CEO, Loudeye; Thomas V. Ryan, Senior VP, Digital & Mobile Strategy and Development, EMI Music; Richard Conlon, VP, Marketing and Business Development, Media Licensing, BMI; Jonathan Kim, SVP Product & Services, WiderThan; Chad Hodge, Group Manager for Media & Entertainment, Microsoft; and moderated by Daniel Harris, CEO, MediaPass Network.

We have the audio of the panel below…worth listening to in full, to get a good overview of the current shape of the market and issues.

Some salient points:

Gewecke: Even though the numbers are not that big compared to other countries, the U.S. market is very robust. It has led the way in master ringtones adoption. It was a function of timing on when mobile content took off here.
Globally we sold more music videos on the phones last year than on iTunes.

Ryan: The majority of our digital revenues in Asia are mobile, about half and half in Europe and less than half here in U.S.

Conlon: We’re seeing a shift from productizing to services, in publishing’s case. We see our role as helping that shift from ownership to conditional-ownership or rental, as streaming becomes more pervasive.

Kim: Some operators look at themselves as music companies and work very closely with labels. The other set of carriers are more handset and service oriented…two different frame of minds. The jury is out on who will win.

Brochu: The biggest issues are interoperability-related. Battery issue has been solved, storage had been solved and fidelity has been solved.

mp3logo1.gif You can download the panel audio here (65 min., 16.1 MB).

Our Media Summit coverage is being sponsored by thePlatform

Comments have been disabled for this post