Off-portal Mobile Music Downloads Break Free
Vodafone UK has launched the first ever single price, full track mobile download service with mBlox and mobile music specialist New Visions and record labels, The Ministry of Sound and V2.
Currently consumers are not only paying for the value of the content via premium billing, but also for the cost of the data traffic to deliver the content. Consequently, songs that are approximately 1MB in size can cost consumers the Р?1.50 charge for the song and an additional Р?8 in data charges. Now consumers will be able to download full track songs to their mobile for one single, one off cost.
Other Operators
mBlox has worked with Vodafone to agree on wholesale data tariffs which will make this cost effective service possible. Initially only available to Vodafone customers, Orange expects to offer this service shortly with the other UK operators expected to make the facility available within a few months.
New-Visions’ technical partners Cube:80 provided an OMA compliant Separate Delivery Digital Rights Management (DRM) solution integrated with their Direct-To-Consumer WAP hosting, content delivery and billing platform. This will be the first time this sort of technology has been trialled outside the network portals, allowing consumers to send on files that are rights protected to their friends.
Launching later this week music from labels Ministry of Sound (MoS) and V2 will be on offer and will feature new releases and classic tracks from artists. Following the initial phase, other content players will be able to use the new model in next few months.
Music labels and artists will soon be able to go directly to the consumer rather than through an operator’s WAP portal or a mobile retail portal.
D2C Becomes Viable
The operators’ data charges for downloading content are often cited as the reason for the slow uptake of rich media services on mobile. Currently consumers are not only paying for the value of the content via premium billing but also for the cost of the data traffic to deliver the content. As a result songs of about 1MB can cost consumers the Р?1.50 charge for the song plus an additional Р?8 in data charges.
These new data tariffs are low enough to be bundled with the cost of the song and provides the consumer with a single cost for both the content and the download. This means consumers on Vodafone buying from MoS or V2’s WAP site, created by New-Visions, will not incur any data charges on their mobile phone bill.
Julia McNally, director of New-Visions, said, “New-Visions has launched many official WAP sites for artists on the V2 and Ministry of Sound labels before but the data charges were just too high to support music downloads. With the mobile music business – from ringtones to full-track downloads – now worth Р?3.2bn, wholesale data tariffs will enable music labels and artists to bring music and video downloads directly to consumers on the move.”
“We have been selling music and video downloads for over 1.5 years now, but so far have been restricted to sell our content through the operator portals” said Patrick Hagenaar, mobile operations manger at the Ministry of Sound, “as it hasn’t been feasible for us and our artists to sell directly to our customers due to the high data charges. We feel that D2C is the way forward for us: it’s easier for us to interact with our customers, build lasting relationships and as a result offer a wide range of dance music downloads according to their needs, rather than being restricted to operators’ priorities. There is a lot of great dance music out there, which is big in the clubs, but doesn’t get a chance to be sold as music downloads through the mobile operators, so this is a great opportunity.”
Colossal Milestone
“Rich media, especially music downloads, are the future for the mobile entertainment industry” said Andrew Bud, executive chairman of mBlox. “A massive step forward has just happened, thanks to Vodafone. For the first time, we can offer a viable business model for rich content delivered direct to the consumer. Direct to consumer rich media has been unviable till now”.
“This is a colossal milestone in the story of mobile entertainment” said Bud. “I hope that other mobile operators in UK and other countries will follow suit soon.”
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Tags: Entertainment, Premium Services, Vodafone, WAP