Mobile music is increasingly becoming a larger part of digital music, and the fight between record labels and Apple over control of music has been covered in depth. An interesting viewpoint from this article is the idea that speciality stores are a thing of the past — most digital content vendors are going to sell everything. “If you don’t make your mark in music now you’ve marginalized yourself as a digital entertainment provider for the future,” says Larry Moores, senior vice president for global marketing and business development at WiderThan, which builds platforms for mobile music services for customers like Verizon Wireless in the United States and South Korea’s SK Telecom.” Mobile music stores will inevitably expand to include video, and most will likely expand to include other content. A big factor of this is the desire to sell content to consumers based on the brands they’re looking for. When someone searches for a Shakira song the company wants to offer Shakira video, Shakira wallpaper, Shakira games, everything that the customer might want, and this requires selling more than just music.
Although digital music in western markets is largely PC driven (even mobile music tends to be side-loaded) the two most advanced mobile markets, Korea and Japan, mostly sell digital music through mobile.
“SK Telecom, for example, now accounts for half of South Korea’s entire music market after launching its MelOn service two years ago. About 600,000 of MelOn’s 4 million-plus users are $5-a-month subscribers getting unlimited music via PCs and phonesâ
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