Very poorly attended talk, this. Maybe everyone is nursing a sore head after last night but there are only about 20 folks here.
Mobile phones as devices for consuming music
Neil Marshall, Sales Director DX3
The over-the-air experience is stopping the spread of mobiles as a channel for downloading music.
DX3 do full-track downloads for folks like Woolworths.
35% of people asked say they want a mobile phone to play, store and retrieve music (tho asking people want they want when it comes to these new services may not be the best way of finding out)
Jeremy Copp, Chief Sales Officer Beatnik
Beatnik provide audio software for handsets. So what does software like this enable, beyond full track downloads?
Mobile music is following the PC/Internet model: mobile music is synonymous with music downloads. What about other services, considering the capabilities and context of use which are different for mobile?
Mobiles are inherently audio devices; personalised to a great degree; connected constantly; and communication about music is a social norm (is it? always? sounds wishy washy to me).
Ringtone market is a great indicator of the potential of audio services - is it? It's well understood, available to all.
There's apparently an inverse relationship between spend on handset and spend on ringtones - folks with cheaper phones buy more.
We need over the air downloads to reach the mass market - can't assume the PC and fixed internet is available to all. +1
User experience must be good: must be simple to find, preview and purchase content. They shouldn't require any technical knowledge of phone type, formats, etc.
Common audio formats are good (slight yawn)
Now he's talking about Mobile XMF, which I presume is a new format that Beatnik are pushing. Doesn't seem to be an open specification - looks like I have to pay for it.
Audio advertising - apparently this is good because customers are used to it from commercial radio.
Mobile XMF is an open industry standard. While based on Beatnik's on RMF format, XMF is an open standard backed by the MIDI Manufacturers Association and adopted by the 3GPP.
Some useful background info on XMF here ...
http://www.midi.org/xmf/
http://www.midi.org/xmf/xmf_faq.shtml
http://www.beatnik.com/technology/xmf.html
Posted by: Richard White | November 18, 2005 at 05:11 PM
Richard: any idea why we have to pay for XMF specs? That seems unusual, why are they not released freely?
Am I right in thinking that XMF is a Beatnik-developed technology which has been opened up?
Posted by: Tom Hume | November 21, 2005 at 03:58 PM