Music

RoyaltyShare Phases Out Digital Distribution

A little over a year after RoyaltyShare entered the digital-distribution business, the company is exiting the market, paidContent has learne…

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Mobile Music Sales Will Reach

The music industry has to be prepared to give music away for free, according to analysts Screen Digest. In a study of 27 countries including…

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EconMusic: Our Coverage In Links

We just had our first EconMusic conference at London’s Natural History Museum. During the jam-packed day we talked about mobile music declin…

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Sonic Boom Relaunches, Expands Mobile Plans

Sonic Boom, a re-launch and re-branding of Sonic Branding Solutions, will begin offering a suite of new mobile web and social applications a…

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MY FM Launches Website

MY FM, the FM station from the Bhaskar group has launched a portal – www.myfmindia.com. Don’t go by the press release (here, doc file): They…

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Challenges Facing Mobile Music

If the mobile music industry is going to take off, it appears to be down to the labels and carriers — at least, that’s the impression given…

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The Unpredictable Ringtone Market

The Guardian has a good analysis on the ringtone market, and whether it will continue to grow or start fading away. On the one hand, the abi…

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Melodeo To Stream ITunes To Mobiles

Melodeo is testing a service which will let users stream songs from their iTunes library to their mobile phones, with plans to extend the se…

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Playing Music Through Cellphone Keys

This has been happening in Europe and Asia for a while, and now some artists in U.S. have started doing this…WSJ has a story on one such a…

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All India Radio To Digitize Services

All India Radio (AIR) is digitizing its services and did a pilot near Delhi University, reports Hindustan Times. Given the high cost of rece…

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Alltel Launches Side-Loading Service

Alltel has launched a service to make it easier to side-load music to some of its phones, as possibly yet another example that the biggest i…

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eMusic: No Sale Talks At This Point

For a while now, we had been hearing sale rumors about eMusic, the online music service which sells songs without DRM. In an interview with…

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XM To Be Available On Rogers Wireless

Rogers Wireless in Canada has signed a deal with satellite radio broadcaster XM to broadcast up to 25 channels of XM commercial-free music p…

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Napster, MusicNet Report Happier Numbers

Both Napster and Musicnet reported their subscriber numbers today, and some seemingly good news form both:
— Napster says it will announce…

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Mobile Data: Carriers Should Face The Music

In a rather crotchety opinion piece in VNUnet Guy Kewney makes a pertinent point: “Projections show that the next five years will see SMS re…

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Warner Music Reaches Out To EMI, Again

EMI has received a bid approach from Warner Music, the latest twist in a seven-year battle in which the two music groups have tried to buy e…

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Ringtone Aggregators Branch Out To Survive

Not necessarily a new insight, but mobile content aggregators have been going through an identity crisis for at least the last two years, an…

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Warner Plans To Expand Rhino Globally

Warner Music International plans to sell music from its subsidiary Rhino globally, focusing on mobile and online sales channels. One of the…

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Thumbplay Adds EMI Music To Content Mix

Thumbplay, a D2C mobile content provider with more than 50,000 pieces of mobile entertainment content under license, has sealed a deal with…

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Leap Wireless Plans Mobile Music Service

Leap Wireless has signed up Paris-based MusiWave to offer a mobile music service through its Cricket brand sometime this year, writes RCR Wi…

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Lycos, Quepasa Move Into Mobile Content

Lycos has signed up PlayPhone to offer a mobile content site (LYCOSmobile by PlayPhone), which will offer games, wallpapers and ringtones. T…

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Ericsson To Offer Music From The Orchard

Ericsson has signed a deal with The Orchard to offer its catalogue on Ericsson’s white label music service, reports Mobilised. The deal cove…

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MTV Wireless Head On DIY Ringtones

Greg Clayman, the SVP of MTVN Mobile Media, has written in his blog about a new ringtone service he’s found — Mobile17.com. Well, that was…

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Jupitermedia Buys More Music Licensing Sites

Jupitermedia is obsessed with royalty-free…images first and now music. It has bought the assets of StudioCutz.com and BlueFuseMusic.com fr…

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The Ringtone War Between Labels And Publishers

The Register has a very detailed piece on the current battle between labels and publishers concerning ringtones, and why some artists (eg, t…

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Orb MyCasting Gets 500K Downloads

Orb Networks has announced that more than half a million people have downloaded and are actively using its MyCasting service. This is on PC…

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EMI Gets Another Bid From PE

The EMI dance continues, with or without WMG in the mix: the world’s third-largest music company has received its second takeover approach i…

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MusicPlusTV.com Gets First Round Funding

Music Plus Television Network, at MusicPlusTV.com, an online music video destination site based in LA, has received a first round of investm…

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Mobile Music Advances In Canada, New Zealand

Canadian operator Telus has launched a subscription mobile music store, according to Mobile Entertainment. This adds to Telus’s existing pay…

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Music Tours Launch Mobile Content Store

In a press release the founders of the music festivals Vans Warped Tour and the Rockstar Taste of Chaos tour have announced they’ve teamed u…

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Music Industry Fights Over Ringtone Licensing

RCR News: The record labels, via the Recording Industry Association of America, are seeking to bypass the music publishers and songwriters i…

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WAP Pages For Indie Music

INgrooves has launched WAP pages to promote independent artists, an advance on its previous method of selling via premium SMS. It’s the sort…

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Jerry Springer Ringtones

Jerry Springer is releasing ringtones, promoted in a 20 second spot during his show. I’m not sure what the ringtones will consist of, and I’…

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Warner Music In Mobile Music Deals

Warner Music Group has made some music announcements. First, the most relevant to mobile: “Warner Music has also unveiled a series of strate…

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Classic Rock Drives Ringtone Growth

The best selling ringtones are Hip Hop, everyone knows that, but this article argues that that is the very reason that future growth will co…

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The Mosquito Dancetrack

I am often delighted by the random meanderings of technology and trends… the latest news is that the company which developed the Mosquito…

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Podcasts By Phone…Who Needs Data?

Fonepods offers a service that allows people to access podcasts from any phone, assumedly through a voice call. “A Web-based interface allow…

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WorldSpace And Jhankar

Here is an exhaustive interview with William Sabatini, VP Global Programming, WorldSpace, the digital satellite radio services company. Indi…

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Geodesic Launches Mundu Radio On Mobile

Geodesic India has launched Mundu Radio, a free software for accessing Internet Radio using mobile devices, via GPRS. The software is curren…

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Saregama India Plans Music Aggregation Portal

The Indian Express: Saregama India Ltd, is testing a music portal for aggregation of digital content, including ring tones and caller tunes.…

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@CTIA: The Price Of Mobile Music

The mobile music panel at CTIA was about what you’d expect from a mobile music panel at CTIA, nothing too unexpected. The most exciting thin…

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Optus To Offer Macquarie Radio Cellcasts

Australian telco Optus has signed a deal with Macquarie Radio Networks to offer mobile cellcasts…”By dialling 955 on their handset, Optus…

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Chennai Online Launches Tamil Music Portal

Chennai Online has launched a website for Tamil music – www.tamil-songs.co.in. The website, claiming to be a one-stop shop for Tamil music d…

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The Continued Rise Of Mobile Music

The New Zealand Mobile Music Awards will happen on September 12th, but here’s some interesting quotes from the people running it:
“These awa…

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MTV’s New Attitude

As MTV hits 25 it has to adjust to the digital world, no longer the upstart challenger but the entrenched challenged. A lot of that is mobil…

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Yamaha Makes Phones The Musician’s Companion

The Wirleless Content Department of Yamaha America has launched the Musician’s Companion, for $9.99. It’s sold through various carriers, and…

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XM Satellite Radio Teams Up With Alltel

Alltel Wireless can now get the XM satellite radio service on their handsets for $7.99 per month. The service will include “audio streams of…

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JazzOutLoud Promises Jazz Mobile Content

Another niche mobile content site, JazzOutLoud plans to offer mobile content for Jazz enthusiasts. The service will launch “this fall” and i…

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Alltel To Offer Podcasts on Phones

This is the first operator in U.S. to officially offer podcasts on mobiles: Alltel, the #5 mobile operator in U.S., which is also in the mid…

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Death Row Records Signs (Another) Mobile Deal

Death Row Records has signed a deal with Koch Records and Hudson Entertainment to publish mobile content based on Death Row artists, which i…

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Why Warner Doesn’t Need EMI

Hint: its to do with digital. Paul Sloan says in B2.0 that despite some talk about Warner-EMI possible merger being in doubt after SonySBM d…

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Mobile Phone Comeback For The Walkman

Sony used to rule the portable music roost with its Walkman products, but it fluffed the format changed to digital music badly just when a s…

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More Changes at EMI: Adam Klein Leaves

Adam Klein, EMI Music’s executive VP of strategy and business development, has left EMI. He was effectively overseeing the digital strategy…

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Prince Closes His Online Music Store

Prince’s five-year-old pioneering experiment with online music distribution is going on hiatus….he has closed down NPG Music Club. The sta…

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Digital Sales Fuel Music Biz In H1

So says data from Nielsen SoundScan: Sales of digital albums soared 126% during the first half of the year, while digital tracks rose 77%……

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XM Radio on your Telus cell phone

Satellite radio broadcaster XM Radio has signed a deal to with Canadian operator Telus Mobility to offer some of its stations to the carrier…

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Radio To Mobile In Australia

Here’s another mobile effort by a radio station…Australian Macquarie Radio Network has “become the first Australian radio group to ink a c…

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Tower Records To Launch a Download Service

I have been playing with it a bit, and am unimpressed…YAMUDS (yet another music download store). Tower.com/Digital is powered by Canadian…

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Targeting the LGBT Niche

There’s a new mobile content portal targeting the gay and lesbian community called Medialicious.tv. The site features original ringtones and…

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Mobile Music Biz: Growing Pains Soon?

The mobile music market is growing at a healthy rate, but Josep Anton Aliagas, CEO of Spanish mobile content portal Arena Mobile, has warned…

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RIAA Launches Master Ringtone Awards

That’s all we needed…Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has announced the launch of a Master Ringtone Sales Award….makes s…

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Zingy’s New $3 Million Ad Campaign Starts

NYC-based Mobile content distributor Zingy, which has been attempting to claw itself back after some management setbacks, is launching a new…

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Canada’s Aliant Launches Full Track Downloads

Canadian telco Aliant has launched a full track download service with 300,000 songs (expect that number to grow, of course). Each song costs…

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David Lynch Goes Mobile In US

There’s always room for cult content in any medium, and it’s pretty hard to get more cult than David Lynch. The iconic film maker is making…

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Eminem Settles Ringtone Dispute

Eminem has settled a dispute with Cellus USA (which is owned by Airborne Entertainment) over the sale of his songs as ringtones. The lawsuit…

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Mashup Ringtones, From Mixxer/3GUpload

3GUpload — which got a $20 million investment a couple of months ago — has relaunched under a new name, Mixxer.com. The Mixxer site has a…

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New Acts Using Ringtones To Build Fanbase

Reuters has an article on the way new music acts are using mobile to promote themselves…examples given are the Hip Hop reality show Nexxt,…

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Zingy Goes D2C

Another mobile content company has gone direct-to-consumer, with Zingy launching a shortcode-based service with a “Get Dfrnt” ad theme…con…

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EMI’s Politics and Ted’s Departure

Couple of schools of thought (based, in part, on the e-mails I have received since our first report appeared) on Ted Cohen’s departure from…

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The Future Of Music Is Digital

Variety.com (sub. required) also speaks to Sudhanshu Sarronwala, CEO of Singapore-based Soundbuzz, who thinks India’s music sector could be…

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Content Via Voice Calls

UpSnap provides mobile content via a voice channel (to confirm an answer to a question I asked in a post last week), the interested customer…

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Selling Music, Not Downloads

Navio has released AV Commerce 2.0, a “Rights over IP (RoIP) technology which uniquely enables distributed transactions and device independe…

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Napster’s Mobile Music Efforts

Napster, which announced its earnings yesterday, gave some more details in the earnings conference call (transcript from SeekingAlpha), abou…

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Labels Search for Next Mobile Music Money Maker

I think this fairly giddy article perfectly captures the lustful attitude of the record labels and operators to mobile music…”People take…

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Start Mobile Launches Ringtone-As-Music Service

Start Mobile has launched a service (mooted a month ago) that aims to sell original music created by emerging artists as ringtones. “For dec…

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Mobile Music Looks Beyond Ringtones

Now that the ringtone market is “nearing saturation” with growth rates expected to fall to a mere 20% this year, the mobile music industry i…

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Wireless Carriers and Music Industry

WaPo has a good story on how mobile operators are helping revive the music industry. Some recent examples of exclusive deals in U.S.: Last w…

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The Revival Of Warner Music

Edgar Bronfman is finally getting some media and analyst love, for reviving Warner Music Group, on the back of digital music. What analysts…

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Phone Tune Triggers Iraqi MPs Row

“MP Ghofran al-Saadi said her bodyguard was attacked when the phone played a well-known Shia religious tune while the (Sunni) speaker was be…

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India Going To Be A Mobile Music Nation

National Ledger: India is turning a mobile nation. Indian mobile music downloads are going to push behind the legal conventional music in re…

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Chuck D Brings Mobile Power

Forbes also does a profile of rapper Chuck D and his plans for mobile music (we covered it here before)..he has started a mobile-content agg…

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Clear Channel Signs Up Artists For Websites

Clear Channel is making its biggest online music push since they became active about a year or so ago: More than 900 Clear station websites…

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MTV Brings Emerging Artists to Mobiles

That’s the service it is launching: it is putting more support behind emerging artists through its “Discover and Download” service. It featu…

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The Money In Online Music

This story states the obvious: very few are making anything, for now. Reasons? Competition, marketing expenses, a faulty business model, slo…

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Original Music Goes Mobile

Start Mobile, which sells wallpapers created by artists, has announced plans to move into the ringtone market by selling selling ringtones c…

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Shazam Expands D2C Effort

Shazam has expanded its direct to consumer effort, offering a subscription service on its website plus other content. In addition to using t…

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Fuse Offers Mobile Content

Cablevision has signed on InfoSpace to provide mobile content for its Fuse channel, a 24-hour music channel with a reported audience of 37 m…

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My Big Thing About MySpace Ringtones

The thing that interested me about the whole MySpace ringtones thing is that the first band to take advantage of it is an unsigned Australia…

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Chuck D Forms Mobile Content Firm

Rapper Chuck D, co-founder of legendary rap group Public Enemy, has joined the rarified field of rappers and hip-hop artists’ forays into mo…

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Auction For Exclusive Ringtones

The American Composers Orchestra plans to raise money for its young-composer and educational programs, with a charity auction, including exc…

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The Vagaries Of Digital Music Business

It’s hard out here for digital music service providers…just read Loudeye’s latest annual report to get an idea of how unstable the busines…

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@ Contenido Movil: Karaoke Ringback Tones

People who find ringtones and ringback tones annoying are going to have more to complain about soon…Steve Zitnick, CTO of Interop Technolo…

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Full Live Concert Direct to Mobile Subscribers

Amp’d Mobile and MTV2 are sponsoring Fall Out Boy’s
‘Black Clouds And Underdogs’ tour. As part of that sponsorship Amp’d will broadcast the…

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Zingy Scores Notorious B.I.G. Exclusivity

Zingy has signed “an exclusive licensing deal with the estate of hip-hip legend Notorious B.I.G., a.k.a. Biggie Smalls, for the worldwide ri…

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Most Popular Movie Ringtones

Moderati has released the top ten movie theme ringtones sold on its service Modtones…
Song title/Movie — Movie
1…

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iTouch Wins “Covertone” Case In Sth Africa

The South African Advertising Standards Authority has dismissed all of Sony BMG’s complaints against iTouch regarding it selling realtones t…

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Aguilera on Orange Phones

Pop star Christina Aguilera will release songs from her upcoming album on UK/Euro operator Orange for use on Sony Ericsson Walkman phones……

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Music Phones Vs iPod Debate Still Raging

At the Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit in Hong Kong there was more smack-talk about music mobiles taking on Apple’s iPo…

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Execs: Mobile Music’s A Maze

“We’re creating a lot of clutter,” said Courtney Holt, head of new media for Interscope Records. “Consumers are demanding choices but we’re…

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Another Competitor For Mobile Music

People are often comparing the multi-function capabilities of todays mobile phones with Swiss Army Knives…now Swissbit and Victorinox have…

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Pure Phat Renamed Hip Hop Official

GoTV has renamed its Pure Phat hip hop music/ lifestyle channel to Hip Hop Official…I don’t know why, I liked the name Pure Phat. The site…

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Jamster Germany Offers Mozart Ringtones

Jamster Germany is celebrating the Year of Mozart (that’s this year, if you didn’t know, he was born 250 years ago) with some ringtones, ava…

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Napster Gets a Mobile Customer, Finally

It took better part of a year, but Napster finally found a customers for its mobile music service, to a regional carrier in U.S.: SunCom Wi…

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Cingular Launches Music Recognition Service

(via Texutally) Cingular has launched a mobile music recognition service called MusicID…it launched yesterday and is being powered by Lond…

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VoIP As Music Sales Channel

This is an interesting development…Qpass has expanded its agreement with Skype to offer Personalise Skype, “a service that allows Skype us…

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Sony BMG Names New CEO to Replace Lack

Well, that was a lot of fun while it lasted…for us journalists, that is. The CEO and chairman of the Sony BMG board are trading hats in a…

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Sony BMG Declares War On Ringtone ‘Theft’

There’s a case in front of the Advertising Standards Authority in South Africa between Sony BMG and iTouch over the use of the phrase “truet…

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Loudeye’s Unanamed Retailer: Target?

So put two and two together, after the Loudeye announcement earlier today about discontinuing music service development in U.S. and shelving…

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O2 Plans ‘Visual Radio’

O2 has announced plans to launch a visual radio service via a tie-in with Virgin Radio, which announced its intentions a year ago.
For “int…

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Smart DJ To Stream Personalized Music

MusicGenome has announced the release of Smart DJ, a system that uses artificial intelligence to “accurately analyze listeners’ music prefer…

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Rogers Wireless Offers Podcasts (PDF)

Canada’s Rogers Wireless has teamed up with Melodeo to offer their mobile customers more than 1,500 podcasts covering 16 categories includin…

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Skype To Sell Ringtones From Warner

I’ve expressed skepticism about Skype’s ability to sell ringtones through its VOIP service, and I still do, but it seems that others like Wa…

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Various Ringtone News

I received an e-mail from Jamba (the German version of Jamster) which seems to indicate the online mobile content portal was voted “ringtone…

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Digital Music Bits:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060126/wr_nm/media_yahoo_linksys_dc

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=musicNews&storyID=2006…

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Mobile Music A Revenueless Land Grab

The industries (music, operators, etc) are upbeat about the potential of full-track mobile music, but when pressed admit that no-one is maki…

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Mobile Industry Goes GaGa For Radio

Mobile radio is pretty hot, or so it seems from the discussions at MIDEM this year. Among the new service, Radio DJ from Vodafone, whch we’v…

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Warner On Message

Warner Music has reportedly hinted it will launch a new kind of mobile music product: the SMS tone. As the name implies, this is a tone inte…

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@ MIDEM: Just Asking…

[by Mark Frieser] What top operating system/software conglomerate’s music division, the success of which has been middling at best, will beg…

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@ MIDEM: Taking The MIDEM Shuttle

[by Mark Frieser] If you’re flying to MIDEM from New York (as I did), there’s only one non-stop flight going to from New York to Nice (the c…

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Digital Music Group Increases IPO Pric

Digital Music Group is milking it for all its worth: the seller of digital musical recordings to online stores has increased the estimated p…

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$3 Music Subs For 3 Australia

3 Australia has launched a subscription-based $3 per month digital music download service. The service is in partnership with destra Media,…

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The Music Retail Meltdown: Musicland and HMV

Two interconnected pieces of news came out across continents today, emblematic of the declining fortunes in the offline music retailing indu…

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MTV Reconnects With Virgin On Select Content

MTV — which has invested $50 million in Amp’d — has granted competitor Virgin Mobile exclusive rights to branded content from the shows “T…

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This is more about data charges than mobile music, but it points to a PR problem… people who download songs (and other mobile content) ove…

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Vodafone Radio DJ, From Vodafone And Sony

Vodafone has signed up Sony NetServices to launch Vodafone Radio DJ, which will offer personlized radio channels streamed to 3G phones and c…

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The Vcast Launch Event At CES

Our journo on the ground Staci has some pics from the launch event..
Pics here on Flickr

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Motorola’s iRadio Promotes Sales

Rafat has already posted about this but something which jumped out at me that he didn’t cover was the move to integrate it with carrier’s mo…

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Bathsheba Malsheen In A Groove

Bathsheba Malsheen is the president and CEO of Groove Mobile, which powers the back-end of many carrier mobile music offerings… she is cur…

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Subpoenas Over Download Price

Just a quickie…New York’s attorney general Eliot Spitzer is investigating whether the four record companies that dominate the industry hav…

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The Master Tone Revenue-Share Breakdown

A detailed breakdown of the revenue share arrangements in mobile master tones in U.S….the story takes the example of a sale of 50 Cent “C…

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The Orchard to Distribute Mastertones

Independent music distributor The Orchard has signed a deal with EMI Music Publishing to use the record label’s catalog as a source for mast…

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Exclusive Ringtons From Notorious B.I.G.

Today saw the launch of the album The Notorious
B.I.G Duets: The Final Chapter. which features remixed versions of the dead rapper’s songs w…

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Bell Canada Launches Music Downloads

Bell Canada is the latest to sign up with Groove Mobile and offer a full-track download service. In what is becoming a habit the press relea…

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Mobile Music Gets Noticed

“This was the year of mobile,” EMI’s Cohen says. “Mobile became front-of-mind for both consumers and the content companies.”
The article po…

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Q&A: Mike Pinto; President And CEO Of MobZilla

This is a short Q&A about mobile music… Why would anybody want to listen to music on their mobile phones?
“Why would anybody want to liste…

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International Christian Mobile Music Radio

ChristianMusic1.com has signed on with Sydus to put its radio station “free of charge on over 65 million handsets in over 90 countries”. The…

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Vodafone Combines MusicFinder And Music Store

Vodafone has linked two services, MusicFinder and Music Store, to “enhance the convenience and spontaneity of mobile phone music shopping”..…

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Fortune Discovers Ringtone Composers

This just in: Fortune magazine has discovered ringtone musician composers. “A new generation of songwriters sees the mobile phone as an emer…

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Grooving To Mobile Music

An interesting article on Groove Mobile, which powers the back-end of many carrier music services, including the one recently launched by Sp…

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Mobile Gets New Notorious B.I.G.

60 ringtones based on the music of the late Notorious B.I.G. have been launched, a lot from the new “Notorious B.I.G. Duets: The Final Chapt…

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Destra Aims For Mobile Music

This is really an Australian piece… Destra, which was one of the first online music services in Australia, has signed an agreement with So…

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The Mobile Music Generation: a Technology Roadmap

If you missed the ‘Mobile Lifestyle -“The Mobile Music Generation”‘ seminar, this is article is the outline…
From one speaker: “MP3 is de…

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The Ringtone Riddle

WSJ has an article on ringtones and mobile music, and the danger music providers face if they make the mistake of thinking they can charge t…

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Lost On Verizon

As expected, the hit ABC series “Lost” will debut its original mobilsode series on Verizon. “Lost Video Diaries,” a series of 22 two-minute…

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P2P Pioneers: Ones Steps Back, One Steps Up

Strange days…As one P2P founder steps back from day to day management of his new company, another pioneer geek steps out as CEO of his new…

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Cingular’s Music Plans: OTA Not The Way

Also in the same BW story linked below, some good info about Cingular’s music plans, worth a separate post. On Rokr, Cingular is still plugg…

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Earnings: EMI’s Digital Revenues Up

EMI Group, the third-largest record company, has reported earnings for its fiscal first half 2006 and has some good results. EMI’s digital s…

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Groove Mobile Signs Up T-Mobile Hungary

Yeah, the four million customers of T-Mobile Hungary can now get their groove on with the introduction of Groove’s mobile music service, whi…

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Mobile Downloads Overtaking Physical Singles

This is from the MobileMonday in Singapore this month…
Paul Jesemann, CTO LogicaCMG Asia, said that during 2004 there were 26.5 million ph…

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Virgin Launches No-Contract Music Service

Virgin Digital, which already has an online music service here in U.S., is retooling it..it is called Red Pass. In addition to its library a…

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Mobile Radio on the Dial

A good look at mobile radio offers in U.S…Sirius, RealNetworks and MSpot Radio currently are offered via Sprint Nextel’s network, and Moto…

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Telstra Adds Local Flavour To 3G Music

Australian incumbent Telstra has finally got around to offering a mobile music download service… “The company is offering access to 1000 m…

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Warner Music Launches Online Label

Cordless Records? That’s the name they come up with? That’s like launching a magazine called Wired in 2005…oh wait…never mind.
Warner M…

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Broadsheets Tackle Mobile Music Conundrum

David Pogue at the New York Times has written a comprehensive article on Sprint’s new music service in which he says the service is a really…

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Televisa Launches Mexico Music Service

Televisa, Mexico’s bigest TV network, has launched Latin America’s first online musicstore (so they claim..I thouhgt I had heard of somethin…

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Football Stadium Ringtone Chart Goes Live

The concept: a ringtone and download chart for football stadiums.
The reason: it’s an untapped market.
“A new ringtone and download chart…

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Grokster To Shut Down; Brand To Survive

Updated: P2P network Grokster, which was implicated in the landmark MGM-vs-Grokster case, is shutting down operations to settle the piracy c…

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Sony BMG To Tap Mobile Arena In India

Sony BMG is looking to expand its mobile music offering in India, and is looking for the ‘right’ partners…

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Mobilcast Network To Manage Podcasts

Melodeo has launched Mobilcast Network to complement Mobilcast — it’s podcast-to-mobile offering. The idea is that people can use the new s…

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More on Sprint’s Music Service

Latop magazine does a review of the newly launched Sprint music service…”we downloaded a dozen tracks and most took a brisk 30 to 40 secon…

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Dwango Inks Universal Music Content Deal

Dwango has signed a deal with Universal Music which gives it access to ringtones, audiotones and images of UMG artists, including Kanye West…

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Groove Mobile Gets Indie Music Rights

Groove Mobile has signed a world-wide deal with Digital Rights Agency (DRA) to distribute full-track downloads from DRAs catalogue of indepe…

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Industry Moves: Snocap Appoints New CEO

Snocap, the P2P song registry service founded by Napster founder Shawn Fanning, has named gaming industry vet Rusty Rueff as the new CEO. Pr…

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iMesh Cleans Up; Launches Legal P2P Service

iMesh, the once-renegade P2P service, is launching a beta online music service, among the first such services to convert into a legal servic…

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Battle For The Soul of the MP3 Phone

Wired magazine’s November issue has a big cover story on what went wrong with Apple iTunes-ROKR phone, with all the issues involved with App…

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Walkman Phones Comes With Dock; Mimics iPod

Interesting addition to the new version of Sony Walkman phone (Sony Ericsson W900) launched yesterday: a home audio system dock for the Walk…

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Motorola Launches Mobile Music Podcasts

Motorola will release a podcast for its ROKR iTunes phone next week and will feature legally-licensed music from big name music acts, a feat…

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Universal Joins Variable Pricing Fight

Universal Records had previously left the arguments for variable pricing for music downloads to Sony BMG and Warner, but has apparently been…

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Japanese Carriers Expand Music Features

The Music Media Watch e-mail newsletter from J@pan Inc Magazine (linked to in the title) has a great article on the mobile music strategies…

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iRadio Get Heard Network Launch On Mobiles

Didn’t realize there was a specialized blog tracking just Moto iRadio…but anyway, interesting MySpace-like tactics from Moto: Motorola wil…

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Groove Mobile Hits Music Charts

Groove Mobile has announced that “over-the-air downloads direct to mobile phones on the Groove Mobile network are the first and only mobile…

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DecentXposure Searches For King of the Ring

“More than 200 of America’s most exciting emerging artists are expected to participate in an online ringtone battle of the bands called ‘Kin…

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Eminem’s Ring Thing

Word in the hood is that Eminem (Marshall Mathers III) is suing some ringtone companies to get them to stop selling ringtones based on his m…

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Moto Tunes To iRadio

“Motorola announced on Tuesday that Universal Music Group will make its music catalogâ

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Are Ringtones Growing The Music Industry?

If they are, you won’t find the industry admitting it…the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has released anothe…

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Digital Music Firm Files For IPO

Digital Music Group, a seller of digital musical recordings to online stores, is planning to go public in an IPO of up to $36 million of co…

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Musings On Skype

Relating to the press release Rafat reported on below…At first I thought the Skype Ringtones and so on were going to be for mobile phones,…

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@ CTIA: Qpass To Launch Skype Ringtones

As we mentioned earlier this month, Skype has launched ringtones and wallpapers for its users, and I was and still am skeptical on it. Anyw…

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MTV And Warner in Mobile Music Videos Deal

This is an interesting use of music videos: MTV and Warner Music Group have announced a global licensing agreement for the use of music vide…

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A Quick Rethink Over Mobile Music

It has been argued by Steve Jobs and widely accepted by most people except carriers and record labels that selling full-track downloads to m…

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Def Connect’s To Mobile For Hip-Hop

AG Mobile and Def Jam Mobile have launched Def Connect, which will offer “six channels of exclusive, made-for-mobile video content including…

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@ DH: The Concert Network

At Digital Hollywood, had an interesting chat with Jeff Shultz, the CEO of The Concert Network, the VOD live music channel on Comcast, Adelp…

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What Can Trump Mobile Content?

Warner Music Group has signed a deal to create and distribute mobile content based on Donald Trump — who is described as a “pop culture ico…

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Brian Harvey’s Ringtone — Mr Boo Dee Boo

Brian Harvey, the former East 17 singer, is behind the Mr Doo Bee Doo ringtone which AEI Mobile was using as a promotion through a competiti…

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EMI: Inside a Digital Makeover

A good story on the re-tooling of EMI, the third-largest music label, hinging on digital and mobile music. EMI Music CEO Alain Levy sees fi…

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Clear Channel Forms New Content R&D Team

I’m still not convinced about Clear Channel’s online strategy despite their recent aggresive anouncements, though clearly, Evan’s hiring is…

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Skype’s Big Idea: Ringtones?

Well, the calculations, if any, are on the sheer number of users…Skype has launched ringtones and wallpapers for its users. But as this st…

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FMC: What of Payola?

[by Derek Slater] The afternoon panels focused on radio, specifically payola. The traditional points were made: it’s the public’s airwaves a…

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FMC: Monetizing the Back Catalog

[by Derek Slater] Jim Urie, President of Universal Music & Video Distribution, provided some interesting data about their back catalog. Of t…

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Wildlife On Mobiles

Juice Wireless and Wildsight Productions have launched two new mobile content services, Wildtones.com and Birdtones.com, for wildlife enthus…

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Napster President Slams The Ringtone Rip-off

Napster president Brad Duea has used Mobile Content World to berate operators for wanting consumers to buy music from them, even if they alr…

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FMC: Resetting the P2P Table

[by Derek Slater] Today’s opening panel brought together heavyweights on both sides of the Grokster aisle, though the discussion was unusual…

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FMC: Wrapping Up the First Two Days

[by Derek Slater] I participated in an FMC edition of the What’s On Tonight podcast hosted by GartnerG2’s Mike McGuire and Allen Weiner. Am…

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Clear Channel Sites Will Push New Music

Evan Harrison is a busy man these days: Clear Channel is launching a new program that will use its radio stations’ sites to highlight the wo…

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Youngsters Dial In To Movie Clips Via InfoSpace

Kids returning to school are buying ringtones based on popular teen movies, past and present…yet another licensing opportunity for studios…

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This Week: Future of Music Policy Summit

A last minute addition to our conference coverage lineup: We’ll be covering the Future of Music Policy Summit happening this week in Washing…

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It’s All About The Music

If the launch of the iTunes phone Rokr E1 didn’t do much for either Apple or Motorola it certainly turned the spotlight onto mobile music, w…

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Timbaland Launches Mobile Album Of Ringtones

Ringtonia has pointed to a story about Timbaland launching Get By, a “mobile album” of seven specially crafted ringtones. “Get By is the ina…

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Sirius / Sprint Mobile Music Service Debuts

Satellite radio service Sirius, which signed a deal with Sprint for a mobile version of its service, has launched…Sprint users can now acc…

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The Buzz on iTunes Phone: Gadget Sites Down

The buzz surrounding the launch announcement of the Apple-Motorola iTunes phone is so strong that multiple gadget sites covering the launch…

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Australian Court Rules Against Kazaa

An Australian court has ruled that the managers of P2P software Kazaa—owned by Australian-based Sharman Networks–had authorized users to…

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iTunes On T-Mobile?

I’m thinking of starting an “iRumors” category…This article shows a slide from a T-Mobile presentation that apparently indicates iTunes wi…

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Mobile Karaoke On Its Way

Karaoke giant Sound Choice has plans to release its catalogue of 15,000 karaoke tracks to the mobile phone. It’s an unsurprising move consid…

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Warner Music Group To Form Digital/Mobile Label

Warner Music Group has announced plans to form a digital label, tentatively named Cordless, which will release songs exclusively for downloa…

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Ringtone Patents Herald More Lawsuits

“Marco Luzzatto, the son of patent lawyer Edgar Luzzatto, who claims ownership of a registered patent allowing cellular telephones to transf…

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New Zealands Top Ringtones

Telecom New Zealand has award some Platinum (10,000 downloads) and Gold (5,000 downloads) awards to the ringtones it sells…
The three plat…

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Can Cell Phones Save the Music Business?

Will mobile music save the music industry or will they find some way to stop it? The article makes the case that ringtones are becoming the…

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Ringtones — And Their Theft — On The Rise

It looks like the ‘ringtone piracy’ meme is starting to take hold…the figures are pretty old (such as Jupiter Research’s March 2005 report…

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Warner To Launch “E-Label”

Warner Music Group is creating a new online music-distribution mechanism that will rely on digital downloads instead of CDs. Edgar Bronfman…

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Pod2Mob Launches In Beta

Pod2Mob is an application that allows users to stream podcasts to their mobile handsets…it claims to be the first but it hasn’t beaten its…

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ReelFX — Ringtones By Foley Artists

AG Interactive, the new media subsidiary of American Greetings Corporation has launched ReelFX, which are ringtones developed by professiona…

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Seattle Station To Offer Programs on Mobiles

Seattle’s KEXP non-profit radio station, partly funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, last month became the first station in the U.S. t…

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Be An Online Ringtone DJ

Airborne Entertainment has launched an online service which lets people mix their own ringtone — it was apparently launched in late July i…

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Foo Fighters Hear Cingular Sounds

The Foo Fighters is the latest musical group to debut its new single through Cingular Wireless’ Cingular Sounds Program. The carrier, along…

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Sprint May Hire Groove Mobile For Music

So says Forbes.com…for the upcoming Sprint Nextel mobile music service. Expect Sprint to announce that its hired Andover, Mass.-based Groo…

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Users Don’t Want MP3 Mobile Phones

A survey run by gadget site Pocket-Lint found that 72% of 4184 visitors to the site from around the globe had absolutely no interest in list…

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Groove Mobile Signs Deal With Beggars Group

Groove Mobile has signed a deal with Beggars Group, a collection of independent music labels. The deal will see Groove Mobile distribute ful…

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Music Mavens Change Tune

Mobile music is still a pittance compared with sales of physical CDs, but while the hardware revenue is expected to remain flat the current…

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Music Survey

PC Pro ran a survey on downloadable music and was surprised at “the amount of people already using their phones as a music platform – 12.6 p…

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Robbies Williams Goes Mobile For Music

Robbie Williams and his record company EMI have signed an 18-month deal with UK telco T-Mobile to release his songs on the mobile network t…

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Mobilizing Your Personal Music Collection

Midforge has launched a service which allows you to transfer your songs from your computer to your mobile phone, over the mobile network. Th…

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Amazon.com To Launch Digital Music Service

You read it here first, as usual: Amazon.com will be launching a digital music service soon, according to a job posting it has submitted on…

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Mobile Downloads To Overtake The Net

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has predicted that mobile phones could overtake the internet as the most po…

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“Customers Aren’t Stupid” – Jobs

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has dismissed mobile phone operators as serious competitors for the digital music market, at least until the change tac…

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Mobilecast — Podcasts To Mobiles

This freeware add-on to iPodder automatically converts podcasts to the AMR format used in most mobile phones…AMR files are 3-g times small…

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Hot Ringtones

Issue date: August 6, 2005. Top selling ringtones compiled from internet reports collected and provided by Nielsen Mobile, via BillboardPost…

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Ringtones Industry Peaking?

(sub. req.) This story in FT makes some major errors in coming to the conclusion that the days of ringtones are over. Though it is true that…

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Mr T Launches Ringtones

“I pity the fool who doesn’t answer their phone” and “Pick it up, Sucka.” Those are the wo voicetones launched by Mr. T., on Blue Frog Mobil…

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DisTones For Those You Disrespect

Ringtonia picked up on this in a Forbes article about mobile phone users (which for some reason they described as “more wired”)…DisTones m…

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Napster Ringontes Launched in Canada

Napster has launched its ringtones in Canada with Rogers Wireless..Naps is working with Dwango Wireless on the offering, both in US and now…

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Good And Bad News For Mobile Music

A survey by The Leading Question on music piracy unearthed some interesting statistics concerning mobile music…”A third planned to buy a d…

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Digital Music Is Going Mobile

The record labels are banking on mobile music to break Apple’s monopoly hold on the market…”People say Apple dominates the download catego…

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Mobile Phone Rappers Spit Grime

The interesting part of this article about British youth using mobile phones to “spit” into mobile phones while making grime music — a blen…

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Winamp Creator Frankel’s New Online Jam

Justin Frankel, the programmer responsible for Winamp and Gnutella, is at it again: he’s launching a new software called Ninjam, which allow…

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Tower Records Uses Mobiles To Draw Customers

Brick-and-morter music stores are having a tough time of it at the moment…HMV has closed all its stores in the US while Virgin has abandon…

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UPDATE: Piracy Comes To Ringtones

I guess it was just a matter of time…QPass has claimed that “the music and ringtone business is being ripped off to the tune of

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Yamaha Wireless Offers Layered Ringtones

The Wireless Content Department of Yamaha Corporation of America is offering mobile ringtones using “hybrid content that layers live recordi…

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Download Music From The Radio Onto Your Mobile

Music On Command — which identifies and sells songs played on the radio — has launched a mobile service. The system (detailed in the graph…

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Indie Labels Get Ringtones

IRIS Distribution has teamed with Xingtone to “allow independent labels affiliated with IRIS to offer ringtones directly from their websites…

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Napster To Go Comes to Palm

Napster To Go, Napster’s portable subscription music service, has added new devices compatible with its service, including a new option for…

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Cingular Sounds Goes Country

Cingular Wireless today announced the debut of Gretchen Wilson’s latest single “All Jacked Up” through Cingular Sounds, the “first exclusive…

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Crazy Frog Descending On North America

All you Americans who were disappointed you weren’t getting any of the Crazy Frog fun, turn that frown upside down! Universal will distribut…

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Hot Ringtones

Issue Date: July 16, 2005. Top selling ringtones compiled from internet reports collected and provided by Nielsen Mobile, via BillboardPostP…

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Mobile Music Reality Check FromVMU Head

Some refreshing bit of reality check from Daniel Schulman, the head of Virgin Mobile USA: Mobile phone operators need to suspend their fanta…

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The Nokia Fugue in G Major

NYT has done a piece on ringtones as an artform…”Mr. Bousted, 18, is a ringtone D.J. A competitive ringtone D.J. “You put certain songs in…

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EU Looks To Harmonise Music Licensing

The European Commission is aiming to boost online and mobile music sales in the EU with proposals for a Europe-wide copyright system…”Each…

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Ringtones Ringing In Money For Indian Telcos

Ringtones have emerged the highest after SMS in bringing in revenues for mobile companies. With around 20-25% of India’s 56 million mobile s…

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Live 8 Mobilized

Live 8 was a big musical success, although whether that will translate into action from the leaders of the G8 remains to be seen. There’s a…

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BlingTones' Ringtones Crunk Out The Revenue

BlingTones has reportedly sold 3 million units (which include ringtones, wallpapers and screensavers) since it launched in September last ye…

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The Wireless Player's Music Rush

Witness the O2 Wireless Music Festival which happened over this week in Hyde Park in London..well, it was sponsored by mobile operator O2 an…

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Hip Hop's Mobile Takeover Continues

It’s no secret that hip-hop rules the mobile music roost — a look at the Billboard weekly ringtone charts show that clear enough — and thi…

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More in Infinity's Visual Radio Plans

U.S. radio giant Infinity, owned byViacom, has already announced plans to launch Nokia-HP backed Visual Radio technology/service through its…

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Verizon Wireless Plans Music Phone, Service

(reg req.) Verizon Wireless will unveil a music-playing phone and online music service to compete with Apple’s iTunes store and phone to be…

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New iTunes Hints At Coming Mobile Support

Again, one of those things where when it happens, wake me up. Anyway, Apple released a new version of its iTunes music software today, and t…

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Mobiles & Music Festivals — A Perfect Fit

The Glastonbury Festival has resulted in a few mobile stories…Orange has announced the launch of a mobile channel dedicated to the event.…

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Ringtone News

Ringtones are among the most successful mobile content because they cater to the “personalisation” drive amongst users. There’s a few ringto…

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Hot Ringtones

Issue Date: July 2, 2005. Top selling ringtones compiled from internet reports collected and provided by Nielsen Mobile, via BillboardPostPl…

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Cingular Considering Launching iTunes Phone

This is going to reverberate all over the industry over the weekend: Cingular, the No. 1 U.S. mobile service, is considering selling the muc…

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Ringtones Make Sweet Music For Record Label

Now that phones are playing master tones (actual song snippets), ringtones are becoming big business for record labels, which were excluded…

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ASCAP's $5 Million Ringtone Bounty

In this otherwise vanilla story on the ringtones market, this nugget caught my eye: The performing-rights organization ASCAP, which collects…

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Ericsson On The Napster Deal

I think Ericsson has gone the right way in the recent deal with Napster to offer a Napster-branded music service to telcos. Keeping this ser…

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Mobile Music Royalty Explained

In response to a recent post on the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada lobbying for increased royalties we receive…

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AOL To Launch Mobile Radio Soon

In this story about radio on mobiles (the story covers a lot of ground, and gets all confused with the technolgoies, but worth a read), some…

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Composers Will Ask For Tax On Ringtones

Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada is lobbying the Copyright Board for a “tax on ringtones”.
The group is arguing…

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Fourth Week At Top For Crazy Frog

When the Crazy Frog remixed single hit the shelves of record stores people were surprised to see it hit number one…but the people who clai…

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Hot Ringtones – Top 10

Issue Date: June 25, 2005. Top selling ringtones compiled from internet reports collected and provided by Nielsen Mobile, via BillboardPostP…

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iPod Users Desperate For Streaming

Plastic Bugs has posted a program which allows iPod/OS X Tiger users to stream songs from their iPods hooked up to their computers to their…

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UPDATE: Napster Hits A Winner

I was unimpressed with all the mainstream press reports I found on the Napster/Ericsson deal that was announced today…most of them were fa…

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Sirius In Deal With Sprint

A deal a day, keeps the satcasters stay…Sirius Satellite Radio made a bold move toward cell phone integration with an alliance that will p…

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New Ringtone Services For The US

A couple of ringtone services that aren’t based on music have opened shop in the US. RetroRingtones is expecting to launch its ringtone serv…

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Some Top Headlines From Billboard PostPlay

Billboard PostPlay, our joint venture with Billboard, covers the digial music industry in depth.– Universal Music Adds Full-Track Downloads…

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Japan Continues To Lead In Mobile Music

Japanese mobile telcos have led the world in 3G phones and mobile content, and its normally the business models rather than the technology t…

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Def Jam Mobile Formally Launches

AG Mobile, the wireless division (under AG Interactive) of greetings card company American Greetings and Hip Hop label Def Jam Enterprises a…

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Sprint Gets Class

Sprint will offer full-music ringtones from hit shows on Broadway after recognizing that not everyone in the US is a fan of hip-hop…The ‘M…

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Ringtones On Forbes

Forbes has an article on ringtones, which is mostly based on an old survey. There are some interesting stats though: “So far, it’s mostly yo…

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Mobile Tagging Service A Hit

Shazam, the UK-headquartered music-tagging service that allows people to identify a song by having holding their phone up to the source and…

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Top Digital Music Headlines

From our Billboard PostPlay blog:
— 13.6% Of US Mobile Users Downloaded A Ringtone In April
— Melodeo To Offer EMI Songs To Mobiles
— EMI…

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A Brief Description Of The Ringtone Market

United Press International has done a pretty good job of covering the ringtone market in the US…covering just about every angle. The artic…

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Yahoo’s Mobile Music Moves?

An interesting story about YAhoo’s latest music service and how it fts very well onto the smartphones: “What makes Yahoo Music Unlimited so…

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Verizon Wireless Expands Ringback Reach

Verizon Wireless has increased its ringback service to include New England and Washington…I don’t know what’s preventing the company offer…

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The Shot Phoned Round The World

The new battlefield that Microsoft and Apple will fight on is digital music, and if this article is any judge the leaders of the two compani…

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Napster Claims 100K Ringtone Downloads

Napster, which launched its ringtone store earlier this month, said it had sales of more than 100,000 Napstertones since the mobile phone s…

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Hot Ringtones – Top 10

Issue Date: May 28, 2005 – Top selling ringtones compiled from internet reports collected and provided by Nielsen Mobile, via BillboardPostP…

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Ringback Tones Rollout in US

A detailed story on the roolout of ringback tones in US: currently T-Mobile, Verizon and First Cellular of Southern Illinois have started th…

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Mobile Music Is on the Charts, With a Bullet

Billboard (which partners with the parent company of Moconews to publish BillboardPostPlay) has announced its plans to move into the mobile…

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Minick Secures Sony BMG Deal

Newly-merged music giant Sony BMG has appointed Minick to provide its direct-to-consumer mobile multimedia download offering…”Sony BMG bel…

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VirtualRadio For Mobiles

Ninj has launched VirtualRadio, a software program for streaming online radio stations to your handset. The stations come over your operator…

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palmOne Puts Rhapsody On LifeDrive

Real Networks has announced that it’s Rhapsody service has been bundled into the new LifeDrive from palmOne. The LifeDrive is like an iPod f…

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Mobile Music & DRM

Here’s a short article summarizing an interview with Barney Wragg – Vice President of the eLabs arm of Universal Music Group focused on DRM…

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Coca-Cola Launches Mobile Music Promotion

Coca Cola UK has launched a promotion with the prize being mobile music — either ringtones or full-song downloads, and it might turn a prof…

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Hot Ringtones

Issue Date: May 21, 2005 – Top selling ringtones compiled from internet reports collected and provided by Nielsen Mobile, via BillboardPostP…

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Excite Japan Launches Mobile Music Service

According to the latest Music Media Watch newsletter, “Excite Japan started a new site for chaku-uta and chaku-motion called ‘Excite Music’…

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A Guide To US Ringtone Services

Gamespot has left off games for a bit and spent some time reviewing ringtones. It covers all the major US telcos and some large third party…

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Gates Sees Mobile Phones Overtaking iPods

Bill Gates has predicted that mobile phones will overtake the iPod as the portable MP3 player of choice…a statement which should be comple…

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Napster’s Mobile Hopes

Napster, whose stock has been hit severely today after Yahoo’s new discount music service, is now touting its ringtones as a major part of i…

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Napster’s Earnings Today

Napster reporting its Q1 earnings today, and should be tons of fun on the conference call, with their stock being hammered after the Yahoo m…

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Mercora Goes Mobile

Mercora, a company which allows users to broadcast their song playlists over a p2p network, has launched a mobile version of the service dub…

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Four New iTunes Stores Open For Business

iTunes’ stores debuted today in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland; that brings the total to 19 countries. The Swiss store is teaming u…

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Moto-iTunes To Launch in July

Well, I’ll believe it when I see it, but apparently the pics posted over the last week were indeed development shots of iTunes Mobile. The c…

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Digital Jukebox May Be A Bridge Too Far

Given our mission here at paidContent — to cover the economics of digital media — I’m predisposed toward, well, digital content. But I hit…

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Napster & Dwango Pair Up To Offer Ringtones

Napster and Dwango Wireless on Monday unveiled a pact to offer music ringtones and other features in a new service that Napster hopes will w…

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Hot Ringtones

Issue Date: May 14, 2005 – Top selling ringtones compiled from internet reports collected and provided by Nielsen Mobile, via BillboardPostP…

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Ringbacks Beat Ring Tones? I Feel Like A DJ

Julie Ask, a JupiterResearch analyst who is blogging her experience with trying ringback tones, has stated that friends — once they learn t…

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The Unsustainable Price Of Ringtones

Every man and their dog have remarked that ringtones cost a lot more than their better-quality MP3 cousins…this short interview with a mus…

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Review: Lyricize, Personalized Songs

A few weeks ago I blogged on the launch of a new service, Lyricize, which allows you to personalize songs. Soon after I received an e-mail f…

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Hot Ringtones

Hot Ringtones – Issue Date: May 7, 2005. Top selling ringtones compiled from internet reports collected and provided by Nielsen Mobile, via…

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RealNetworks Mulling Wireless Music Services

RealNetworks, which announced a new version of its Rhapsody music service (along with a portable music service), is mulling a service to off…

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Ringback Tones: Confusion Abounds

(via TechDirt) Well, according to a very informal survey by JupiterResearch analyst Julie Ask…so here’s what it needs: education. In other…

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Violin Virtuoso Ringtones

Just to prove it’s not all rap artists and moantones, violin virtuoso Nicola Benedetti is to launch a range of mobile phone ringtones to tap…

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Top 10 Ringtones

Top selling ringtones compiled from internet reports collected and provided by Nielsen Mobile, as posted on our sister site Billboardpostpla…

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Ask Not What Music Can Do For Mobiles

A very good point: “Phone-based music has tremendous potential but it doesn’t necessarily lie in having Cingular become iTunes. It lies in d…

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Xingtone mStore Lets Everyone Sell Ringtones

Xingtone has launched mStore, “a turnkey e-commerce solution for independent content owners to market, sell and deliver real-music ringtones…

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Verizon Finally Gets Ringback Tones

Verizon Wireless has signed a deal with Universal Music Group to offer a music catalogue for ringback tones. “Ringback Tones from Universal…

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Top 10 Ringtones

1) Candy Shop, 50 Cent Featuring Olivia
2) Lovers And Friends, Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz Featuring Usher & Ludacris
3) Number One Sp…

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Indie Music On Vodafone

Vodafone will offer HavocTV Mobile, an alternative music channel with an “unwavering focus on the vanguards of alternative, electronic, punk…

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Infinity To Launch Visual Radio

So Visual Radio is headed to U.S., after a hard and long gestation period…it is an interactive radio technology developed by Nokia and bei…

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Motorola Set to Unveil iRadio for Cell Phones

More than any other handset manufacturer, Motorola is banking on music to sell its mobile handsets. “Motorola, the No. 2 maker of mobile tel…

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Record Labels Court Mobile Carriers

OK, the title’s fairly obvious, but according to this article its not just because mobile phones offer a new marketing channel. The record l…

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P. Diddy Sees Bling in Ring

When P. Diddy declared “I am an MVNO” a lot of people tittered, and a lot of people thought “Actually, he’s got a very good point”. Let’s f…

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Of iPod Killers and Mobile Dreams

BusinessWeek’s latest international edition has a cover story (and a bunch of related stories) on efforts by the triumverate of handset manu…

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Clear Channel Expanding To Mobiles

Clear Channel is concerned about the future of radio, and is thus looking to expand into other media — particularly online and mobile. “An…

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Groove Mobile Pushes Music

Groove Mobile has launched Discover HITS, a ‘push’ mobile music service. Rather than assuming that users know what music they want when they…

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Xing Interactive Starts Record Label

This is great…Xing (known in the mobile content world for Xingtone and other mobile content) has started a record label. “The crossover op…

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Tossing Their Tunes In The Ring

Ringtonia has linked to a Los Angeles Times article speculating on whether a ringtone could become a hit song. “The idea intrigues hip-hop a…

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Law To Make iTunes Compatible With Microsoft?

US legislators are considering a plan that would “outlaw music protected by proprietary digital rights management (DRM) technology, such as…

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Personalization Moves Past The Handset

Personalization is often touted as the driving force for uptake of mobile content – proponents of the theory point to the fact that the lar…

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5M Full Songs Sold By KDDI

Japan’s KDDI’s EZ ”Chaku-Uta Full” mobile music download service has sold 5 million full tracks since opening on Nov 19 last year. “Tracks…

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Jamster Sued For Selling Practices

Jamster, a service owned by VeriSign that sells ringtones and other content to mobile phone subscribers (those ads you see everywhere on MTV…

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MSpot Launches Streaming Radio

Startup MSpot has launched with a streaming radio service for mobile phones in the United States, going live on Sprint’s Nationwide PCS Netw…

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Will Ringbacks Ever Take Off in US?

Well, we’ve been waiting, and some industry players are now starting to express doubts on whether ringbacks, as a phenomena, will ever be as…

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MediaBay Announces 2004 Results

MediaBay is “a digital media and publishing company specializing in the marketing of spoken audio entertainment” which is changing its busin…

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Mobile Killed The Radio Star

Big plans are underway to use mobile phones (and other mobile devices) to store, play and – most importantly – to sell music. Ringtonia has…

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Xingtone Signs Roxio

Xingtone has landed a worldwide distribution agreement with Roxio. Xingtone’s new ringtone software that allows people to convert MP3, WAV a…

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Church Sells Its Own Ringtones

A German church has taken to selling Christian ring tones to fund the restoration of its organ…For the equivalent of about £1.40, worship…

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How Kids Set the (Ring) Tone

Time Magazine has published an article on mobile content, which is not front-line investigative journalism but is a good healthy read, and a…

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Ringtones Inspire Stupid Surveys

What are your character flaws? Are you unrealible, immature or just boring? Forget taking dubious personality tests from cult members who ac…

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Or Are The Carriers Holding Back iPhone?

Despite recent claims by Motorola’s CEO that Apple was to blame for the failure to demonstrate iTunes handsets rumors are still running rife…

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“The Passion Of The Christ” On Mobiles

AG Interactive has secured the rights to offer mobile content based on the movie “The Passion of the Christ”. On offer will be ringtones and…

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Sony Ericsson’s Walkman Phone Gamble

This article is about Sony Ericsson’s move to grab marketshare by using its Walkman brand in a mobile, and goes on to discuss some of the ra…

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Bertelsmann Launches New P2P Download Platform

Bertelsmann,which co-owns the world’s second-largest music label Sony BMG together with Sony Corp and used to be involved in the p2p busines…

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Global Music Sales Flat on Ringtone Sales

The record labels are claiming global music sales fell again in 2004 by ignoring sales from digital downloads or for music ringtones. Which…

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World After The Music Industry

Mobile operators and music labels are currently fighting over the mobile music industry, or specifically which industry should get the lions…

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Sony BMG Notes High Mobile Music Sales

Sony BMG has released some figures on its sales of Music Tones, borrowing parlance from the recording industry. To wit:
— Usher has gone pl…

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Buying Mobile Music Via A Compact Disc

This is reasonably interesting – Mobot is a service that allows owners of camera phones to take a picture of a CD cover, (presumably) send i…

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Carriers Stonewall Motorola’s iTunes Phone

Motorola plans to hit it big with Rokr, it’s “iTunes phone”. But carriers don’t want it, and stopped the handset maker from displaying the d…

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AOL Unveils Mobile Services, Strikes Deals

More about AOL’s mobile efforts, coming out of CTIA: it has unveiled new mobile services, including streaming music and navigation feature…

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YellowPepper and Blue Frog Mobile Partner Up

YellowPepper, a leading mobile services provider announced its partnership today with Blue Frog Mobile, one of the largest mobile content p…

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Chaoticom Changes Name To Groove Mobile

Chaoticom, one of the mobile music technology vendors in U.S., has realized that unpronouncable techie-counter-culture-friendly names sounds…

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MusicKube Launches SongLink’d Service

MusiKube, an NYC-based mobile music recognition company, has launched its consumer service, called SongLink’d. It works similar to what othe…

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WiderThan Moves Beyond Ringbacks

WiderThan, a company almost synonymous with ringback tones, is now trying to move beyond it: it has launched its WiderMusic Service Platfor…

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Virgin Radio Offers Mobile Broadcast

Virgin Radio has teamed with Sydus to launch (what they claim is) the first radio station to be broadcast via 3G (or 2.5G) networks. The ser…

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Interesting mobile music info

MobZilla has a few interesting facts about the music industry on its investors page – so bear in mind it only has the good side of the story…

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MobZilla to stream BMI music to mobiles

I managed to miss this a couple of days ago, but mobZilla has signed a deal with BMI to stream 4.5 million music tracks on its service. 4.5…

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How long does music on your mobile last?

During a fairly standard summary of the mobile music market, Aloysius Choong at CNet Asia has raised a point that I hadn’t thought about pre…

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New Order promos album with free ringtones

UK band New Order is using Hypertag technology to promote their latest album. Hypertag units will be installed in a couple of HMV stores, an…

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Ring my bell

You know it is mainstream when New Yorker does a story on it…a fascinating story. “The ringtone also teaches us how songs work. Which clip…

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Virgin Radio tunes in to 3G

It’s not quite at critical mass but music-to-mobile is picking up steam. Virgin Radio has a new deal with provider Sydus to offer Virgin Rad…

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Sony Ericsson unveils Walkman phone

Sony Ericsson has unveiled its Walkman branded phone (the W800) which was mooted at 3GSM a couple of weeks ago. The model will start selling…

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Expensive Content DRM Threatens Open Standards

Mobile handset manufacturers are baulking at the $1 per device charge by the Open Mobile Alliance to put DRM on mobile phones. They point ou…

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Universal Mobile Sees Rise In Revs

(sub. req.) Universal Mobile, the digital arm of the world’s largest music company, is predicting an explosion in the value of content sold…

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Companies Race for Music Phone First

The company likely to see the most adoption will be the one that capitalizes on the way that phones are becoming small social-network comput…

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Looks like we got a ringtone!

Now everybody’s favorite mobile content site has it’s own ringtone, thanks to all-round nifty dude Claude Bossett. The link to hear the ring…

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The data day: O2 Active breaks a billion…

O2, the last of the UK operators to roll out 3G, announced today that UK customers have logged on to over one billion pages of internet cont…

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Future of Radio Is Downloadable

MotorFM, a German radio station focussing on alternative rock and electronic music, is moving away from the traditional radio revenue model.…

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Music: the magic mobile ingredient?

Everyone’s doing mobile music these days, which leads one writer to wonder whether Apple will start doing mobile phones…I don’t think that…

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Jamster supports music advisory group

Jamster has joined the “What’s the Download” music advisory panel which is trying to work out what people want from music – and probably how…

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Voice enabled ringtone searching

Leap Wireless has introduced a system where users have to simply say the name of an artist to get a variety of ringtones to preview and down…

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Sony Set To Stream to Cells

As an update to the Sony StreamMan service reported last year Ringtonia has pointed to an article pointing out that Sony is beginning the in…

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Telstra wary on ringback tones

Incumbent Australian telco Telstra is wary of introducing ringback tones, claiming that the tones have higher licensing fees and therefore r…

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Ringtones are on track to stay a while

The IHT has an article on ringtones claiming they’ll be staying around for a while, and adding that since the target market for ringtones is…

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XM and Sirius discuss merger

Satellite radio companies XM and Sirius are rumored to be discussing a merger, although they have denied it. These are the only two companie…

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Exclusive ringtones promote album

Hip Hop artist “The Game” is promoting the new album by including a CD insert giving details of how to get free wallpaper for your mobile ph…

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INgrooves launches mobile music label

Another company has launced a mobile-only music label. INgrooves is a digital music company in the first place, though, so INgrooves Mobile…

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German Ringtone Chart Launched

Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) is planning to launch a ringtone chart in Germany, following the “overwhelming success” of the first one in…

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Plugging The Gaps In The Mobile Music Market

The Feature has an editorial claiming that record labels still see mobile music as “interesting” rather than a proven way to generate revenu…

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More on UMG’s Wireless Division

I reported on UMG’s new U.S. wireless division last week..Billboard writes up some more details…
Rio Caraeff, the new VP & GM of UMM-US, s…

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Mobiles get set for visual radio

This one is less far-fetched, as the technology rolls out for visual radio…basically souped-up radio with interactivity on the handset……

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Ring, ring: It’s the Money Call

How hackneyed can you get, with a headline? Oh well…now you know what Thomas Dolby is doing…making some cool, retro ringtones.
Some int…

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Stop Blocking Music

That’s the message of this BW story, comparing European mobile music services with the almost non-existent U.S. ones…
“If the U.S. wireles…

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Wireless Biz Ironing Out Music Kinks

Mobile carriers are keen to promote and sell music on their networks, and want to add other genres to Hip Hop – the only style which has rea…

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Kids ring up huge mobile bills

The old trick of signing people up for a cheap or free offer and then hooking them into an ongoing charged service has made it to mobile pho…

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The Mobile Music Forum 2005

The Mobile Music Forum 2005, taking place in London on the 8th & 9th March 2005, will bring together all the members of the value chain to p…

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Zingy releases new Aaliyah song as a ringtone

Zingy will release a new ringtone based on a previously unreleased Aaliyah song, with a portion of the proceeds going to the Aaliyah Memoria…

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The surprise rise of the US ringtone

Well, the only one surprised are the companies in the industry….big money is now flowing in US in the ringtones business. Stratton Sclavos…

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Hong Kong ‘ring-ring’: An ad in every call

I love being right. Ringtonia has pointed to an article in the Asia Times about “Ad Phone”, which aims to replace the “ring ring” you hear w…

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Kiosk boost for mobile phone users

BT’s mobile division will install kiosks for mobile users. “These new kiosks are easy to use and allow customers to top-up their phones and…

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Ringtones drown out CD singles

Ringtonia has picked out an interesting quote from yet another article on how ringtones are actually producing a lot of money compared to sa…

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BlingTones Launches First Wireless Record Label

I suppose it was inevitable. With so many songs being converted into ringtones, and so many artists releasing specially created ringtones, i…

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Cricket Leaps Into One-Liner Movie Tones

Leap Wireless International is giving movie buffs a chance to personalize their phones with one-liners from the latest box-office hits and t…

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More mobile Hip Hop content

Virgin Mobile has partnered with Universal Music Group to expand its ‘First Dibs’ ringtone offering to include content from Ashanti and Ja…

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Sprint offers streaming mobile music

Sprint will launch six streaming music channels on monday as the culmination of a deal mooted a month ago with Music Choice. Sprint custome…

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EMI Publishing in digital deal with Sony BMG

EMI Music Publishing has struck a wide-ranging agreement with Sony BMG Music Entertainment that establishes rates and guidelines for the use…

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iTunes on Motorola phones in January?

Apple and Motorola have hinted that iTunes may be available on some Motorola handsets as early as next January. The big thing about the deal…

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Unique Mobile Music Mixer

This is definitely something for the professionals. Tao Group has released SSEYO miniMIXA, which is available for smartphones running the Wi…

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India Embraces WiderThan Ringback Service

WiderThan’s ringback service has picked up more than 1 million customers in India, through its customers Bharti Tele-Ventures mobile group,…

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Warner Music puts catalogue on mobiles

Melodeo has signed an agreement with Warner Music Group to offer access to its catalogue – although it doesn’t indicate whether it’s the who…

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Napster to Enter Ringtone Market

Napster, a brand which major record labels once held synonymous with “piracy” and “evil incarnate”, is now pushing into the mobile music ind…

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Aspiro will provide mobile sounds for Telenor

Aspiro will be responsible for the development and delivery of content for the sound category (ring tones) at Telenor’s Norwegian wap portal…

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Bronfman Likes Telcos in iPod Race

Warner Music Group chairman and CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr has claimed that the advent of 3G networks and handsets capable of high quality sound…

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Market for ring tones keeps cell firms busy

Ringtones are the current big thing as users customise their mobiles to express their uniqueness. “I thought it might take a while to catch…

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Mobile operators seek higher sound quality

Music and sound are definitely one of the key selling points of mobile phones, and Japanese operators are concentrating on improving the tec…

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Ringtone to be recorded live

Hip Hop artist Ludacris will record four ringtones live at the launch of his new CD tonight. The deal is a collaboration between InfoSpace M…

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XM CEO Sees Satellite Radio on Cell Phones

The CEO of XM Radio claims to have been in discussions with several telcos and manufacturers about putting the radio service on mobile phone…

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Ringback Tones: Next Big Cellular Thing?

As the title suggests, an article explaining ringback tones and the current state of play in the US. I linked to it because I liked the warn…

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Ring-a-ding bling-bling

Billboard’s ringtone chart is still in the news, and is still dominated by Hip-Hop artists. One thing I thought was particularly interesting…

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InfoSpace Shares Slide on Downgrade

Shares of InfoSpace slid about 10 percent on Nasdaq trading today, due to concerns about future business from Cingular, the company’s larges…

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Warner Music Group puts artists on mobiles

Warner Music Group (WMG) today announced a multi-faceted agreement with m-Qube, a leading enabler of mobile content and applications, to cre…

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DRM to Go: Protecting Mobile Content

With mobile content becoming increasingly popular and profitable, people are now talking about how to protect that content with mobile DRM.…

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Mobiles rise to the iPod challenge

Some people tout mobile phones as the next big way to deliver music: “more Europeans are more likely to adopt music on mobile phones than th…

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Xingtone upgrade ringtone software

Xingtone has updated its software, which allows users to create their own ringtones by uploading clips from their own music libraries. “The…

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Cell phone ring tones put big money on the line

Ringtones are a US$300 million in the US alone. Ring tones are outselling legit song downloads by more than 3 to 1. This seems to be primari…

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Ring-back tones latest in handphone offerings

Ring-back tones, where mobile owners can decide what they want to listen to rather than the traditional tone while they wait for someone to…

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Daily Music Wrap: Nov 8, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up. (Subscribe to the news feed: )
— Billboard Digital Media Entertainment Awards…

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Daily Music Wrap: Nov 4, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up. (Subscribe to the news feed: )
— Would You Like an Extra Shot of Music With T…

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Daily Music Wrap: Nov 2, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up. (Subscribe to the news feed: )
— Digital music’s niche industry: Backend comp…

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Daily Music Wrap: Nov 1, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up. (Subscribe to the news feed: )
— Schools explore digital music: More than 20…

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Cell Phones Heed Call of the Wild

Classic Ringtones, which offers about 40 different chirps, roars and calls from various animals, is launching in the United States in late N…

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Latin Mobile Content Market, The Potential

(via Ringtonia) Wireless companies and record labels see salsa music as the next ring with bling for cellular phones…Industry executives s…

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Sony BMG, Grokster Join Forces

(reg. req.): This is certainly an about face for the labels, or at least one of them: Sony BMG is cooperating with the Grokster file-sharing…

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Music’s Brighter Future

The Economist weighs in on digital music etc…big music labels have still the most to lose from the Internet, the story argues.
This parag…

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Daily Music Wrap: Oct 29, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up. (Subscribe to the news feed: )
— RIAA targets students in new file-swapping s…

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Napster Enables Payments Through PayPal

This is the first major online music service to use Paypal…customers in U.S., UK and Canada can now pay for tunes using PayPal. Napster us…

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Daily Music Wrap: Oct 26, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up. (Subscribe to the news feed: )
— U2 are ‘selling out’ with iPod deal, say fan…

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Sell Yourself A Ringtone

A new entry in the make-your-own-ringtone market…SnipnSend uses a browser applet instead of a stand-alone software package to create MP3 r…

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First Ringback Service launches in the US

Preferred Voice and First Cellular of First Cellular of Southern Illinois have launched the first ringback tones service in U.S.: called Xtr…

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AG Interactive Gets Fused For Music

Fuse Music Network has teamed up with AG Interactive to develop and distribute music-related wireless content to U.S. consumers, regardless…

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Adding Touch to Ring Tones

Haptics pioneer Immersion is launching its VibeTonz technology and ringtonees..and eWeek has an analysis on it…Samsung will release the fi…

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Daily Music Wrap: Oct 25, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
(Subscribe to the news feed: )
— Sony International Ad Campaign: The tenor o…

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Bush, Kerry Agree on P2P

At least one thing they agree on…The solution to copyright theft over P2P networks is not to be found in regulating the technology, accord…

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Daily Music Wrap: Oct 22, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
(Subscribe to the news feed: )
— 25’s to 50 Year Old Internet Music Seekers…

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Daily Music Wrap: Oct 21, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
(Subscribe to the news feed: )
— Online Tracking Firm: Kazaa Losing Users: e…

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Daily Music Wrap: Oct 20, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
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— P2P vendors get serious: Analysing P2P traf…

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WebMD’s Founder Goes Hollywood

Jeff Arnold thinks the future is branded content on erasable DVDs and disks that are tucked on top of fountain-drink lids…he’s founded Lid…

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Lucent Unveils MiRingBack

Lucent Technologies has launched its ringback solution: its new MiRingBack application. The first operator to offer Lucent’s application to…

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Web Radio Gets $1.7 Billion Boost

In one of the largest licensing deals in American raido history, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers has reached a $1.…

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MP3 Losing Steam?

MP3 is still the overwhelming favorite of file traders, but the once-universal format’s popularity has been going quietly but steadily down…

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Daily Music Wrap: Oct 18, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
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— P2P Ad-Supported Music Downloads: Let consu…

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Daily Music Wrap: Oct 15, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
(Subscribe to the news feed: )
— Eminem Satellite Radio Channel Sets October…

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Daily Music Wrap: Oct 14, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
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— Music service Puretracks opens up shop in U…

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Can Ruckus Become a Campus Craze?

This well-connected startup aims to provide college students with a vast online portfolio of songs and movies — legally (It is nice to BW j…

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Wal-Mart Wants $10 CDs

This was the story I was mentioning a couple of days ago…Wal-Mart is using its muscle to ask labels to sell CDs to the giant at lower pric…

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Daily Music Wrap: Oct 13, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
(Subscribe to the news feed: )
— Music industry’s Verizon appeal denied: Sup…

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Blue Frog Mobile Signs UMG

Ringtones vendor in U.S. signs up Universal Music Group…it has already secured mechanical rights for ringtones with Sony BMG Music Enterta…

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Virgin to Unveil Portable Music Player

The consumer electronics arm of the Virgin Group is introducing a new 5-gigabyte hard-disk portable music player, dubbed Virgin Player.
Unli…

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Daily Music Wrap: Oct 12, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
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— Mucking Around With iTunes, MSN Music: MSN…

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XM Radio Online Launches

The satellite radio service XM, which last month announced it online radio service, has formally launched it now…it is here…
It has a mo…

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Global Dawn For Digital Radio

The digtial and satellite radio is catching on worldwide, and Stern’s Sirius deal is the beginning. In UK, which is leading the way in the d…

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Daily Music Wrap: Oct 11, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
(Subscribe to the news feed: )
— Hollywood Files P2P Appeal: Asking the U.S.…

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Daily Music Wrap: Oct 08, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
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— Induce Act Stalled For Now: The Induce Act…

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Daily Music Wrap: Oct 07, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
(Subscribe to the news feed: )
— U.S. album sales up 5.8 percent: The online…

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Motorola and T-Mobile Tie For Music Promos

Motorola and T-Mobile have tied up with multi-platinum selling band The Black Eyed Peas, on a multi-media promotion, including wireless…T…

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‘TiVo’ for Your Radio

Walt Mossberg reviews the new radioShark device from Griffin Technology, and it acts as a sort of TiVo for radio. The $70 radioShark attache…

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Daily Music Wrap: Oct 06, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
(Subscribe to the news feed: )
— Beatles lawsuit delayed as Apple ditches la…

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Record Labels Aim for Net, Hope to Score

This is a good followup on the REM experiment through MySpace.com…and other such experiments by labels. More than 600,000 users listened t…

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Daily Music Wrap: Oct 05, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
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— Ballmer: iPods packed with stolen tunes: “W…

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Daily Music Wrap: Oct 04 ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
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— Store is 2nd in nation to offer custom CDs:…

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German Band To Release Album on USB Stick

Interesting this: German punk bank Wizo will release their new album on a USB memory stick…the first I’ve heard of. (A German language sto…

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Daily Music Wrap: Oct 01 ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
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— P2P usage stats you can rely on: P2P use ha…

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Daily Music Wrap: Sept 30 ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
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— John, Paul, George, Ringo…and Steve?: A v…

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Scandinavian Music on 3

Music videos with mobile operator 3 in Sweden and Denmark…

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Daily Music Wrap: Sept 27 ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
(Subscribe to the news feed: )
— Bertelsmann’s Latest Tune: (sub. req.): CEO…

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Mark Cuban on Music Piracy

Some spirited discussions going on the Pho List: here’s Mark Cuban’s take on music piracy: “Piracy as the #1 enemy of the music business is…

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Daily Music Wrap: Sept 24 ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
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— How the music biz can live forever: Music b…

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Let’s get personalized

“We’re talking personalization. The handset stands uniquely at the intersection of fashion and the digital world. It is both a source of mul…

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User’s Rights And Music Download Prices

This is an interesting study…Marc Fetscherin, currently a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley and his colleague,…

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Daily Music Wrap: Sept 23 ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
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— Townshend Site To Host Streaming TV Station…

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The Money In Mobile Music

Martin Tobias on mobile music: “I believe the primary way to distribute music to mobile devices will not be over the relatively expensive ca…

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Audible Goes Wireless With Sprint

Audible, the spoken word audio digital provider, has made its first move into the wireless space…it has signed a tech and co-marketing dea…

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Can IM Morph Into ‘Instant Music’?

News.com has an interesting take: most of the digital music providers, now that the likes of Yahoo, MSN and AOL are in it, are looking at IM…

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Hip-hop rings put ‘bling’ in cell phones

Hip hop ringtones are hot, as you know: US operator Sprint has begun selling clips of songs for cell phones from artists such as Rockwilder,…

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Daily Music Wrap: Sept 21 ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
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— IDC forecast shows booming MP3 player marke…

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Labels Get Majority in Digital Downloads

The Independent reports that the labels take home the lion’s share of the cost of a digital download — making more money per track than the…

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Napster’s Projected Revs Up By $1 Million

For this Q3, Napster’s projected revenues have been boosted to $9 million, from a prior estimate of $8 million, by parent Roxio (in the proc…

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Forecast: Song Costs May Fall Like Rain

Well, Stephen Levy predicts it…”The labels should understand that the nature of the digital world rewards price cutting much more than in…

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Daily Music Wrap: Sept 18 ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
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— California Targets Illegal Downloads: Calif…

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Unfinished Symphony

(reg. req.) A good overview of the technological solutions (and lack of interoperability of various technologies) in the mobile music indus…

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Napster Receives New Life As Public Firm

So they claim…after shedding its software arm and becoming a digital music pureplay…Gorog believes there will eventually be five leading…

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Daily Music Wrap: Sept 17 ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
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— TouchTunes Gets Patent on Connection B/W Di…

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Daily Music Wrap: Sept 16, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
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— Broadband’s Ultimate Killer Application: It…

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US Mobile Music Market At $80 Mil in2003

So says Frost & Sullivan in its new analysis…”Most participants in the mobile service value chain are unhappy with the current revenue sha…

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Daily Music Wrap: Sept 15, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
(Subscribe to the news feed: )
— Paying for Music in the Internet Age: NPR p…

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MS, Apple pitch music at mobile phone makers

“It’s far more important that handset users have a choice of formats and music providers, and so it’s in no one’s best interest that Microso…

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Rings Tune for DVB-H

O2’s Mike Short seriously thinks DVB-H and 3G can co-exist…”We believe that DVB-H is a key complement to third-generation mobile telecoms…

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Daily Music Wrap: Sept 14, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
(Subscribe to the news feed: )
— Non-iPods get ‘legal’ iTunes solution: The…

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The Streaming P2P Solution

I’m sure this is possible in other P2P software solutions out there, but Register writes that this is very easy to install. The software/com…

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Billboard To Launch Ringtones Chart In US

I had known this news for a while, but had to sit on it for business reasons (but WSJ mentioned it in the story below)…anyway, Billboard i…

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Daily Music Wrap: Sept 13, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
(Subscribe to the news feed: )
— Electronic youth descend on campus
— Longh…

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Hitachi Joins Intel In Hard Drive Standard

Hitachi and Intelhave joined in supporting an interface technology proposed for compact hard-disk drives used in portable music players, han…

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Music’s Upfront

This is a big step for the music industry, and a way for them to get alternate reveues, as their main revenue channels dwindle…
In what is…

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U.S. Ringtones Market Slow to Connect

Well, Billboard contends that the U.S. market for ringtones hasn’t exploded as other continents have…and bases that on the fact that no on…

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Daily Music Wrap: Sept 10, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
(Subscribe to the news feed: )
— Playing to Win: iPod’s Challengers: Little-…

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On Video Portables and Napster’s New Plan

(via Brad Hill) A detailed story by Stephen Mannes on the current crop of portable video players, and Napster’s Janus DRM enabled portable s…

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Daily Music Wrap: Sept 9, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
(Subscribe to the news feed: )
— P2P company sues RIAA over patent: Altnet s…

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Daily Music Wrap: Sept 8, ’04

Daily digital music related stories, in a convenient wrap-up.
(Subscribe to the news feed: )
— Search Engines Fueling Online Music Retaile…

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Some ringtone history

Chicago’s Daily Herald has a general article on ringtones with a useful timeline…

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Digital Music As Banking Incentive

In case you had any doubts on where digital music downloads are moving (increasingly as promotional rewards…case in point, the Teen Vogue…

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Daily Music Wrap: Sept Week 1

Missed major part of last week….here’s the catchup.
(Subscribe to the news feed: )
— Mercora: The next Napster generation?: Mercora uses…

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Apple v. Real v. Microsoft: Law and IT

An audio panel on, what else, Apple Vs Real Vs Microsoft, in which I participated. It included, besides me, Mike Masnick of Techdirt, Jason…

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Beyonce tops ring-tone chart at Sprint

US operator Sprint PCS has released download figures for a number of its top-selling music ringtones, showing four tones from Beyonce Knowle…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 31, 2004

Roundup of digital music related stories…
(Subscribe to the news feed: )
— HP’s iPod TV Ads: Watch them here…
— Maroon 5 top Napster D…

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Mobile Content To Drive InfoSpace Gains

That’s according to a latest note from Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy: “While there could be some concern about INSP being disintermedi…

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The Slow Death Of Radio

(Sub. req.) Expect some radio stocks to fall today…Barron’s has done a story analyzing the future of traditional radio…and the scenario…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 30, 2004

Roundup of digital music related stories…
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— Music Services Debate Portability: Napster figures to be among…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 27, 2004

Roundup of digital music related stories…
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— Homegrown satellite radio software draws XM fire: TimeTrax all…

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Everyone’s Lining Up For Mobile Music

A comprehensive overview of the mobile music market and the future of full-song downloads etc…most of which you keep reading here on a dai…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 26, 2004

Roundup of digital music related stories…
(Subscribe to the news feed: )
— Startup music publisher gets $72M: UK’s Stage Three Music rais…

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Music Services Score an A-Plus At Colleges

More than 20 colleges and universities have adopted legal music download services in the past year, according to this PDF report by the Join…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 25, 2004

Roundup of digital music related stories…
(Well, you requested it, so here it is…an RSS newsfeed solely for “digital music”…Subscribe…

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Madonna Launches Ringtones Store

Madonna has launched her own mobile content store, featuring ringtones and wallpapers, in association with M-Qube. The mobile company said t…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 24, 2004

Covers the last few days of last week…
(Well, you requested it, so here it is…an RSS newsfeed solely for “digital music”…Subscribe to…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 23, 2004

Covers the last few days of last week…
(Well, you requested it, so here it is…an RSS newsfeed solely for “digital music”…Subscribe to…

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The Real Future of Mobile Video

Kevin Werbach: “As soon as two-way video is something the user gets without consciously asking or paying for it, usage will start to take of…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 19, 2004

In case you missed it earlier, I’ve started lumping digital music related news in a daily wrap-up post…
(Well, you requested it, so here i…

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Let the music play

Mobile’s suitability for music content doesn’t automatically guarantee success. DoCoMo has already learned this the hard way – its mobile do…

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Ringtones are music to record labels’ ears

(via Ringtonia) A story on how record labels in U.S. have woken up to the potential of ringtones business. For example, Warner Brothers Reco…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 18, 2004

In case you missed it earlier, I’ve started lumping digital music related news in a daily wrap-up post…
(Well, you requested it, so here i…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 17, 2004

In case you missed it earlier, I’ve started lumping digital music related news in a daily wrap-up post…
(Well, you requested it, so here i…

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RSS Feed For Digital Music Biz Stories

Well, you requested it, so here it is…an RSS newsfeed solely for “digital music”…this incorporates the “Daily Music Wrap” I started abou…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 16, 2004

This is for the last three days of last week, since I was on a break…just in case you missed it earlier, I’ve started lumping digital musi…

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Airborne Takes Snapple Mobile

Airborne, a mobile entertainment publisher, has turned to Snapple to create a line of Snapple-themed games, applications, wallpapers and ani…

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Nyucking it up on cell phones

Sound effects and one-liners from the Three Stooges have been turned into ring tones, which could be either good news for fans of the mid-20…

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Eric Lindert, CEO, HighWired

A short profile of Eric Lindert, CEO of HighWired, a company whose PersonifyStudio application allows mobile users to record personalized vo…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 11, 2004

I’ve started lumping digital music related news in a daily wrap-up post, because the amount of posts in this category were getting out of co…

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Snocap’s Hiring Spree

Napster founder Shawn Fanning’s new venture Snocap has been hiring like crazy….some jobs here…
Related: Napster’s Fanning has Snocap-ped…

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Reactions To Napster Deal

Roxio is changing its name to Napster and focusing solely on digital music..some reactions:
Fool.com: “I can already see Napster in an upcom…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 10, 2004

I’ve started lumping digital music related news in a daily wrap-up post, because the amount of posts in this category were getting out of co…

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Napster/Roxio’s Conference Call

(Conference call link here)
Chris Gorog, CEO, Roxio: “Selling the software business will help us 100 percent focus on digital music…we wil…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 09, 2004

I’ve started lumping digital music related news in a daily wrap-up post, because the amount of posts in this category were getting out of co…

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Satellite Radio Interationally

WorldSpace, the company that in 1990 first launched satellite radio–digital technology that delivers near-CD-quality, static-free audio and…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 06, 2004

I’ve started lumping digital music related news in a daily wrap-up post, because the amount of posts in this category were getting out of co…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 05, 2004

I’ve started lumping digital music related news in a daily wrap-up post, because the amount of posts in this category were getting out of co…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 04, 2004

I’ve started lumping digital music related news in a daily wrap-up post, because the amount of posts in this category were getting out of co…

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eBay’s Empty Digital Downloads

Well, so far, no one legit is putting up songs for biddding on eBay…eBay says it’s still waiting for one of its pre-approved music sellers…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 03, 2004

I’ve started lumping digital music related news in a daily wrap-up post, because the amount of posts in this category were getting out of co…

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Daily Music Wrap: August 02, 2004

I’ve started lumping digital music related news in a daily wrap-up post, because the amount of posts in this category are getting out of con…

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Daily Music Wrap: July 30, 2004

I’ve started lumping digital music related news in a daily wrap-up post, because the amount of posts in this category are getting out of con…

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Daily Music Wrap: July 29, 2004

I’ve started lumping digital music related news in a daily wrap-up post, because the amount of posts in this category are getting out of con…

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The New Musical Functionality

(via Many2Many) Tom Coates has started a series of posts on his site about the mobilizing and portability of music…according to Tom, these…

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Daily Music Wrap: July 28, 2004

I’ve started lumping digital music related news in a daily wrap-up post, because the amount of posts in this category are getting out of con…

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Daily Music Wrap: July 27, 2004

I’m going to start lumping digital music related news in a daily wrap-up post, because the amount of posts in this category are getting out…

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More Details of Napster-Sun Tie Up in UK

The Saturday edition of The Sun will have a unique identifier code allowing readers to go to napster .co.uk and download a single track for…

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MP3 Creator Returns With 3D Sound

Karlheinz Brandenburg, one of the inventors of the MP3 format and the director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Media Technology, has served…

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Punk Rock’s Warped Tour Wins Tech Sponsors

The digital lifestyle marketers spread offline…the Van Warped tour’s extensive sponsor list includes Memorex, Samsung, Cingular Wireless,…

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