Musical mobiles could be the “unlikely lifeline” superstars such as Britney Spears, Madonna and Justin Timberlake need to “claw back some of the vast amounts of cash lost to illegal Internet downloads, industry insiders say”.

Lifelines for Spears, Madonna and Timberlake? Claw back vast amounts of cash lost to p2p?

Sure. Because that’s where it’s at, says the intro to an AFP piece here.

Place-lined Cannes, France, where all those cash-strapped superstars and the poor, shmoozing movie and recording industry moguls who made them are trying to look cool, Mobiles + music = money “was one of the messages being aired at the global music industry’s MIDEM trade fair taking place here, echoing hopes that the burgeoning mobile music sector could come to the rescue of artists and the worldwide record industry,” says the story.

“There is no doubt that music is a fundamental element of the mobile business,” Ralph Simon, chairman of the first MIDEM mobile music forum is quoted as saying. “With 1.5 billion mobile phone handsets currently in use globally, “This is a huge, huge opportunity for the music industry – for artists, managers, labels, publishers and even retailers,” he said.”

Conspicuously absent from the long list of all the people who’ll benefit are, as usual, the buyers >>>

>>> YOU, in other words.

A staggering 113 billion SMS (text) messages were sent via portable handsets around the world in 2003, Simon says, pointing out that the telecoms industry is already well geared up to tap into the huge revenue potential offered by the “mass of people addicted to mobiles”.

Nice.

“Ringtones are already big business, particularly with young mobile phone users, who are ready to pay to change their tone regularly, with the latest hit track from Beyonce or Jennifer Lopez on their mobiles,” the report says, going on, “Ironically, members of the same age group are among the biggest offenders in illegally downloading music.”

Don’t let that stop you, guys. It didn’t stop Pepsi.

Ringtones, though, aren’t the only bright prospects for the music industry, says Simon, citing Japan where “Giant Japanese telecoms operator NTT DoCoMo’s has signed up just over 40 million paying subscribers in the country and 1.5 million outside in just five years by offering a simple entertainment-based service, senior DoCoMo’s executive Takeshi Natsuno said at MIDEM.”

“Boosted sales from the world of telecoms would be welcome to world of music, which is in dire need of a shot in the arm, with CD sales down 10 percent 2003,” says the AFP report, adding:

“Although the next generation of mobile phones should enable users to download whole tracks with vastly superior sound quality, the music industry is not quite ready to take that turning. Major copyright issues still remain and artists as well as record labels want to be sure the technology is well protected from pirates.”

And at least one person in the recording industry has reservations.

“Ringtones are important, but they aren’t the big saviour some people think,” EMI Music Publishing UK chairman and ceo Peter Reichardt was recently quoted as saying, adds AFP

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 27th, 2004 at 8:16 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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