FINAL: MUSIC INDUSTRY'S ADAPTATION TO THE MOBILE PHONE

While music has recently become more mobile than ever with the advent and proliferation of portable media players, the surface of the mobility and ubiquity of music has only just begun to be scratched in terms of potential as a source of entertainment and as a source of revenue.

With the impending entrance of the iPhone into the cellular arena, and the continuing trend of mobile phones media capabilities continuing to rise, it is only a matter of time until a substantial amount of media entertainment will come from our media enabled phones. Right now, the entertainment scene including music and video on the phone is subsidiary at best to that compared to the entertainment we consume on our laptops or iPods. But the phone will soon become the power player amongst these devices and change the face of mobile media consumption.

This is going to happen in numerous ways, with many different forces (i.e. record labels, Cellular providers, and phone manufacturers) having to work together to create the all so coveted media enriched environment the consumer of today so desperately craves. So lets begin to explore what will be driving these innovations.

First, lets explore the role of streaming media to our mobile devices. This is the umbrella term that will pretty much be the framework for future media consumption in the mobile phone atmosphere. There are already products on the market that stream content from your home television to your adequately endowed cell phone. And even a 3rd party media streamer is in development to work with your Apple TV to even transfer your protected iTunes content to your mobile phone. However, these products are full of compatibility issues and they don't really produce the quality or dependability that consumers demand.

Yet as data networks improve with the development of WiMAX and other 4G technologies, the practicality and realization of streaming's true potential can be realized. People could truly not be limited by insufficient storage, meaning high quality content, even that with large file sizes, could be accessed at anytime, anywhere, with ease and speed. This has great implications for the music industry. For high quality digital tracks with additional metadata (i.e. video, webpages, photo's, etc.) to be delivered along with the music to a phone at anytime opens up this online store that can truly capitalize on people's impulsive nature by giving consumers the ability to purchase content at anytime through their mobile phone and have it successfully play in all of their many venues of choice (Car, computer, stereo, television). But to realize this dream, another innovation is going to have to emerge to help create this seamless media ecosystem.

As the amount of devices that we listen to our music and watch our video on increases, the ever dreadful problem of choosing the write file formats to best cater to consumers begins to emerge. In the recent past, the trend starting with Apple has been to create a proprietary file format (protected AAC) that can only be played on a single type of media player or cell phone, which creates a lot of interoperability issues.

This has been the case in the beginning of the digital music revolution because it was the only way the technology companies viewed distributing music digitally could be profitable to them. Case in point, Apple created the iTunes music store to sell iPods. However, this blogger might argue that iPods would sell themselves without any iTunes music store, just because they are so damn cool and trendy. But I digress.

Getting back to the importance of file formats, i think the past notion that proprietary formats are the best for the consumer is a dying sentiment, and now with evidence from the major players or Apple and Amazon, interoperability is in fashion, and oh how the consumers love this development. See, now that the major players are seeming to take the plunge and beginning to endorse DRM free tracks, interoperability becomes a real reality. While we are nowhere near the end of the tunnel, consumers will probably in the near future be able to buy all their music content at least with out any annoying DRM wrapper.

So what format does the future hold for us. Well as you can probably guess, it could be a toss up between formats. Unprotected AAC has gained a lot of popularity on other players such as those of Sony, Microsoft Zune, Nokia, and internet radio. This could mean a real competition for the all powerful Mp3, which by far as the most interoperability of all formats.

AAC is a new format so its quality is a little better than AAC's, but it's interesting that Apple is choosing to offer their first DRM free tracks in Mp3 format instead of the unprotected AAC. Could this be a preliminary forfeit making Mp3 the true format of the past and the future. Time shall tell, but whatever format is decided on, one thing is for sure, it won't have any DRM attached to it, for the mobility of music in the mobile phone atmosphere depends on it.

Which brings me to my next adaptation the music industry will have to achieve in order to benefit from the mobile phone technology. An important, and often overlooked part of the mobile media in the mobile phone industry, is the importance of service plans.

Right now, it is in my opinion, that data plans are not reasonably priced and that consumers cannot be expected to be paying over $100 a month for unlimited data and a sufficient phone minutes. For consumers to really begin to embrace the mobile media market on their cell phones, the first step has to be taken by the Cellular providers and lower the cost of the unlimited data plans. While it is unknown for sure what data plans Cingular will offer with the upcoming iPhone, it is sure to be a point of discussion on top of the $600 price tag that is being tagged on the phone itself. But data rates and phone plans are really only the tip of the iceberg.

The real key to an explosion of media on the phone and in a mobile environment is to embrace the subscription model. I think this model is perfect for really boosting the popularity of consuming music and video on a mobile devcie, because it matches the subscription phone service that you are already being provided by the cellular providers. However, I have some important stipulations that should be considered.

For a subscription based model of consuming media on a cell phone be implemented, there should also be an a la carte system, like iTunes is presently, to supplement those who prefer to buy their media. So this is what a reasonably priced subscription model should look like. For $35 a month, a user gets a substantial ammount of phone related privlages (minutes, text messages, multimedia messages) and unlimited data usage. To complement the unlimited data usage, for $15 a month, the phone user can have access to their choice of subscription service, be it Napster or a rumored iTunes subscription model. Also, the user, if he or she chooses, can in addition to the subscription model, can purchase a la carte any material they can access on the subscription service at no extra cost or complication.

This sort of subscription model gives the consumer true freedom to choose what media ecosystem to be a part of, choose how they purchase their media, and how they access it.

To be honest, the only real adaptation the music industry has to achieve is to give its consumers more freedoms and choices in how they digest the medium. This is truly the future of music in the mobile spectrum. A plethora of choices, possibilities, and configurations will eventually capture more consumers which I believe will inevitably result in more profit for the industry, and help it retain its once prominent status.

Consumers have been demanding this now for a decade, and in retaliation have resorted to illegal downloading because their demands have been ingored and not respected. Well with the continuing development of higher speed data networks in the cellular spectrum, the music industry gets a much undeserved second chance to claim back a generation that they lost, and make it right. So as the future gets closer and closer, the time for the industry to step up and heed the demands of this blog, gets closer and closer, and with that a new era of music and media can emerge. A truly mobile media.