Mobile music sales set to double

PUTTING A FINGER in the wind, industry analyst Screen Digest has decided that revenues form digital music downloads to mobile phones are going to double in worth over the next five years.

Research Analyst Christine Binns has calculated that music revenues from consumer sales will have doubled from €1.6billion last year (2007) to €3.2 billion by 2012

Behind this surge are a number of new entrants. The most high profile of these is Amazon which announced its entry into the UK market the other day. It is offering cheap DRM-free MP3 tracks to undercut Apple.

Amazon's offering should be good news for those opting for the G1 Google phone from T-Mobile since the compatible Amazon app is built-into US handsets as standards. Presumably somebody will release a non-US version PDQ.

An INQ hot tip for the top is Datz which also has a DRM-free offering but instead of paying by the track, you take out a £99.99 yearly sub. So that's about ten High Street priced CDs before you get your money back.

Although Datz offerings have to be 'side-loaded' into a handset, how difficult is that? Memory card readers are two-a-penny and transferring your entire MP3 collection onto a Micro SD card could be achieved in minutes rather than hours.

Waiting in the wings is Sony Ericsson with its Playnow Plus offering which is presently only available in Sweden. Interestingly the actual supplier of the tracks is Omnifone which just so happens to be behind MusicStation in the UK.

SE's Playnow comes in for some serious praise from Screen Digest's Ms Binns who says,"By using an existing subscription service, Sony Ericsson negates the need to renegotiate deals with labels or design a service of its own."

She adds, "Omnifone's Musicstation outnumbered Napster's rental music service subscribers within seven months of launch. Therefore, the handset manufacturer is maintaining its safe approach, using a proven, successful service rather than developing a service of its own which may not experience the same uptake."

And what of the infamous Itunes from the Duke of Cupertino? Well, this INQ hack might have got it wrong but it seems that an upgrade to version 2.2 for the Ithingey still doesn't provide OTA (over-the-air) downloads via a cellular connexion. Only Wi-fi.

So, Itunes sales don't count as mobile music, then. By comparison, Nokia's Comes With Music sales can definitely count. While only an idiot would attempt such downloads via a Nokia 5310 which is only 2.5G, the N95 is HSDPA and downloads are possible via 3's network.

So, it's going to be a very interesting battle over Xmas as all of these services try to build significant market share. µ