Digital Media Buzz > From Walkman to Moonwalk: Mobile Music Creates Jukebox in the Sky

From Walkman to Moonwalk: Mobile Music Creates Jukebox in the Sky

By Mary Awosika

Daren Tsui is CEO and founder of mobile media company, MSpot, which launched an interactive streaming music service for Java-enabled mobile phones. Tsui’s first wireless company called SkyGo, established in the late ‘90s, launched what is now known as MSpot Radio, which streams live and on-demand music, news, sports and talk radio directly to mobile phones.

Tsui describes the mobile medium as a cross section of portability that allows people to always be in sync. “When you have a connected experience, it’s interesting because it’s social, it’s expressive.”

Now there are the iPod and MP3 players, but Tsui attributes the original portable music device, the Walkman, celebrating its 30th anniversary this month, with being the first to allow consumers to enjoy music on the go and on demand. “It helped to grow the music industry; grow sales. Through portability, all of that drives more consumption of music.”

Long after the retirement of the Walkman, Tsui says the music sharing concept has taken off with the digital age. “The Internet equalized everything and gave consumers more power.”

Tsui predicts that social media and mobile media will join forces in cyberspace. He points to services like MySpaceMusic and IMEEM.com as examples. “That’s where the innovation will come from,” he says. “Eventually, we will be able to create a playlist; a mixtape virtually and send it through a mobile device from the cyber jukebox in the sky.”

How do you feel about the impact mobile media has had on the music industry?
Mobile music is the future of music. If you look at online — right or wrong — consumers feel music is free. They feel that they have the right to access it [for free]. And the industry has suffered. On the mobile side, the consumer expects to pay for everything on and over the phone. They’re trained to do that, so when they buy a ringtone, people still do it because they’ve been trained to do that. Mobile is the future for the music industry to build its business.

What do you view as the toughest challenge in the digital media industry?
The toughest challenge will be finding a happy medium between the three groups: The consumer needs the service they use to be of value enough that they are willing to suffer through ads, or be willing to pay on a subscription; The music industry needs to realize that the heyday of the late ‘80s when companies made billions off CD sales is gone. And rather than stop innovation, have more of an open mind and invest in these ventures; the start-ups, the service-creators of the applications, need to feed their staff and create services that consumers are willing to pay for.

Do you think it’s a certain type of consumer that enjoys the streaming music to the phone, and do you think this will become the norm?
It’s started with the use of the Smartphone, but I think we will be there within five years once mobile is mainstream. The iPod and other portable media will be more of a specialized niche product.

How do you think the mobile music world is impacting how people view the CD; the need for something tangible verses the purchase of digital file?
The need for something tangible is an artifact of my generation. The new generation is used to thinking digitally. CDs will be like vinyl, it will be cool but it won’t be the way it was.

Do you see a time when the retail music store will become a distant memory as well?
There may be no ownership period, and there will just be the digital locker, vault, jukebox in the sky.

What technical gadgets and/or companies out there do you think are worth keeping an eye on?
Apple is the epicenter of mobile media; MobiTv – streaming live TV (SF) – is ahead of its time and managed to stick around; and Omnifone (UK), a music subscription service on mobile phone is experimenting with business models.