Mobile Music

On Thursday’s class we quickly ran through all of the projects that we each worked on as our final paper for our class. There were several very interesting papers shared during this period. I was eagerly awaiting Professor Kagan’s seamless transition from the topic before us into Mobile Music. Unfortunately, as he ran out of ideas in the end, he was forced to inquire directly what the Mobile Music paper was about. I thought this would be a good forum to quickly share a few points about our paper…

Mobile music predominantly includes ringtones, ring back tones, and over-the-air (OTA) full track music. Of course, the first thing I thought of when I first heard the term “ringtones” were the sometimes annoying, seemingly endless musical tones that emanate from people’s cell phones. However, before doing research for this paper, I was not aware that ring back tones –the tones that I would hear when I call someone – could also be personalized. Finally, the OTA full track music market is probably the most fascinating one, in my opinion, as it is less developed and has more potential to change the landscape of music distribution significantly. In fact, as more and more mobile phones become MP3 players also, this will slowly become the future of music distribution.

Of course, there are significant challenges as well, as there are with any newly developing technology – including licensing challenges, lack of standardization, intense competition, and user acceptance. But I think more and more people are probably inclined to agree that they see a future in which their mobile phones double as a mobile entertainment device. Does this mean that we are saying goodbye to the iPod as a separate device? I’m not sure, but my wife’s recent research into a Motorola RAZR that includes iTunes is very likely to be a sign of the future.