Mobile music is quickly getting to be a social, viral phenomenon with mobile users demanding more ways to creatively and efficiently share their music collections.

According to an M:Metrics survey of mobile subscribers in the US and Western Europe, music phone penetration grew 50.7% from November 2006 to November 2007. The United States was the fastest-growing market, with a 63.6% growth rate in that period - from 23.2 million music phone users to 63.8 million. Nearly 11% of mobile subscribers in the U.S. and Western Europe listen to music on their mobile device.

The GTI Telecoms 2007-08 Global Report found that at least 43% of mobile subscribers use their mobile phone to listen to music at least once a day. Students and youth use their mobile phones to listen to MP3s on a regular basis (nearly 12 hours per week). On average, surveyed users spent a little over an hour a day of their time listening to music on their mobiles.

A couple of years back, mobile phones carried very little memory onboard and lacked the capacity for memory expansion. Worse yet, the mindset of handset manufacturers was to keep handsets memory-light and to do more with less.

In a previous position, I was tasked with road mapping device memory requirements and when I listed memory requirements of 4-8 GB (which was feasible based on the device cost), many questioned the numbers, and questioned if music will take off - and also the need for offering so much memory to the end user.

With few memory-hogging third-party applications available, the old approach worked for a long time. But things were expected to change when music took off on phone-sized devices. With the development of mobile digital music, and a few detailed breakdowns of memory consumption using readily available media, I was able to make the case to my colleagues. The memory capacities increased, and consumers began to demand the ability to carry their music on the device they already had - their handset.

As music drove the hardware innovation at the outset of the mobile explosion, it continued to spur innovation at the business level to bring mobile music to consumers.

Once the industry started to recognize the juggernaut that is mobile music, device manufacturers, service providers, and record labels entered the fray and developed newer business models around music, with two clear trends at the end of 2007: business alliances between manufacturers and carriers, and the growth of online mobile music stores.

• Most carriers (Sprint, Verizon, AT&T) have launched music stores by partnering with music companies and record labels like Sony BMG and Universal Music.
• Record labels have started to provide direct-to-consumer music services and are actually considering working together in a venture called 'Total Music' (barring any regulatory hurdles).
• Device manufacturers have followed suit, bringing consumers MOTOMUSIC, Ovi, and others.
• Most of these services have their own revenue methods - some offer per-track pricing, others allow unlimited access for set time periods with the ability to keep music forever (on the same device that is).

Of course, piracy concerns slowed progress for awhile, but between DRM solutions and dual downloads - providing a choice of direct OTA download or PC sideloading - the record labels are more willing to jump into mobile than ever before.

Again, it's innovation to the rescue. Where piracy threatened the supply side of mobile music, creative solutions at the application level have resolved the issue, and it's back to business.

Most recently, innovation around mobile music has shifted focus to music applications tied to Web 2.0 features, creating new music and media experiences.

• Shozu has an On-device client and a network server solution that provides a simple and seamless way for consumers to upload and download music, videos, photos, and more.
• Nabbit allows consumers to tag broadcast-radio music and ads, using a PC application to catalog tags and links, and is working out a future platform for purchases and downloads direct to and from the handset.
• Shazam allows consumers to tag, share, and buy music on a handset while also posting those tags on Facebook pages.
• Pandora - a streaming radio application for the mobile and the PC, with an innovative twist: provide a song or band name and Pandora creates a streaming radio station based on an impressive variety of attributes related to that song or band.

The ability for consumers to tag music - and listen to it or buy it immediately - provides consumers with instant gratification through impulsive purchases and is proving, to drive profits throughout the mobile chain. Mobile music catalogs are selling more music, Carriers are hosting larger music offerings for their subscribers, and device manufacturers are building in more memory and resources as well as more support for mobile media of all types in mobile platforms.

Nearly all current Motorola handsets are Java™ ME enabled and provide access to multimedia/music playback/content using JSR 135. For a quick reference, filter the MOTODEV handsets page for JSR 135 - Audio Playback and check out the results. The majority of these handsets are DRM enabled and have OMA and/or Microsoft Janus DRM schemes for content protection. So if you are a developer of content, you can use either of the DRM schemes to secure your content on most devices. For more details on supported DRM schemes for Motorola handsets, consult the Media Guide for the handset of your choice.

And while researching for your next best innovative feature/application, keep in mind a few new trends that bring interesting twists to music usage:

• As mobile social networking gains stream, don't ignore quick web-layer connections to social media sites. As the darling of the VC crowd, applications that reach social media sites smoothly and meaningfully can bring new immediacy and much richer connected experiences to networking.
• The major record companies have recognized this niche market and have been quick to ally themselves with social networking companies in the hope that well-trafficked music translates to revenue streams. The clear evidence of this trend is the deal between three majors (Sony BMG, UMG and WMG) and MySpace.
• Location-based music has promise - really. You just know tourists to Philadelphia would occasionally be interested in hearing "Gonna Fly Now" at the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. They would even pay a buck for it, I bet. "Chariots of Fire" at the beach. "London Calling" upon landing at Heathrow.
• Ad-supported mobile content is emerging as another major revenue generation opportunity, or an offset to development expenses.
• FM/AM Radio is another interesting area for innovation that developers could look out for - about 36% of mobile phone users use the device to listen to FM/AM daily, according to the GTI Telecoms 2007-08 Global Report.

Multimedia/Music is still a driving force in the evolution of the wireless device. It probably will be for a long time still, and the trends seem well established - simply providing a media player isn't enough. Providing media rich applications which give the user the ability to connect to other likeminded users is the order of the day.

– Asokan Thiyagarajan, Motorola Technology Evangelist

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