Digital Media Buzz > Mobile Music Experience Stunted

Mobile Music Experience Stunted

Next Page « 1 2 »

Pandora allows users to listen to digital streaming music and view videos — no downloading required and no fees. Their partners include: iPhone, Blackberry, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile and some select Sprint users. Pandora is also working to add Android phones to their list of partners. Pandora allows users to visit the site on their phones, register and start listening to a Pandora station. You can save a list of favorite songs and stations to your profile. The disadvantage is that once a user leaves their carrier range, Pandora won’t work. Pandora can’t connect you to a music store to buy a song nor save it.

Rhapsody offers streaming music and capacity to search (artists, videos, songs, albums and lyrics), buy, download music and create playlists. It has a service charge but offers 25 free songs a month. Slacker, on the other hand, provides free digital streaming radio and much of what Rhapsody offers with two exceptions: its music service works off one platform through which users can maintain their playlists, find music, buy, download and add music to their playlist. The second exception is that Slacker doesn’t have a music store. Instead, they offer links to Rhapsody, other music services and network carriers’ music stores so users can purchase music without ever leaving the Slacker website. It’s a stream-lined customer experience. Also, users can play music whether they are in a network carrier covered area or not. Users simply play their playlists from their memory card. Yet, Slacker admits that 100 percent of their mobile users are smart phone owners. “The services need to become platform-agnostic,” says Forrester Research analyst, Sonal Gandhi.

Network providers’ solution to this has been to carry music services on their own platform but music services cost more than outside music services. Verizon’s VCast charges by the song or service charge of $1.99 a month for 15 songs. This doesn’t include the data and cell phone service fees. Customers will soon be able to buy songs from their cell phones from the VCast music store. VCast will offer music downloads free of charge to those with a data plan. The purchase is credited directly to their cell phone account. In the second quarter of 2009, VCast had 40 million downloads of music and video from Blackberry users. Slacker is encouraging network carriers to create open service plans that will allow users to purchase music from their stores regardless of whether or not they use the network’s music service platform.

“We’re just starting to see this kind of openness to a more open platform system,” says Tom Conrad, chief technical officer of Pandora.

Next to the iPhone, Blackberry customers are the most frequent users of Pandora. On average, Blackberry users are spending 1½ hours on Pandora a day. Yet, the user experience hasn’t been streamlined yet for online music purchasing. Both Slacker and Pandora are still in the process of negotiations with Blackberry and their network providers. The problem that is causing the delay has to do with two factors: RIM doesn’t have its own music store and each carrier has its own unique platform for its music store. Previously, network carriers were using models that were more closed. The music service companies and networks will gain digital music customers by creating a streamlined process in which customers can easily navigate from playing, buying, downloading and saving music all on the same system. This is about creating a better user experience.

Forrester Research is predicting that music services and network carriers won’t see immediate gains from direct revenue. Gandhi believes more money will come from indirect revenue sources. The music user experience is critical to the success of digital music on mobile phones. Success will come from playbacks and discovery, Gandhi says.

“For a predominant amount of time, we saw people listening to the radio for 14 hours a day,” Pandora’s Conrad says. “Now, we’re just starting to see the same thing playing out in the digital space. Better discovery of music will lead to more music purchases.”

Next Page « 1 2 »