Mobile Digest

EMI boss: mobile industry can learn from Apple

EMI's CEO, Eric Nicoli, said that the mobile phone industry could learn a thing or two from Apple about mobile music sales, who "makes stuff that people love to own."

"They love the simplicity and user-friendliness of the iPod and iTunes. Apple doesn't employ any sorcery or dark magic to achieve this. They listen to what consumers want. And that shouldn't be Apple's unique privilege," he said.

He said that the iPhone shows what can be done by putting the customer first.

Love it or hate it, there's no denying that the iPod coupled with iTunes has dominated the market, and the forthcoming iPhone could continue that trend.

3GSM 2007: Cboss Russian dancing girls

Cboss is a Russian company that specialises in converged billing, end-to-end solutions and value-added services. It also has a troupe of teenage dancing girls in hotpants. One of those sentences is the reason why once an hour, the Cboss stand is packed with moistly-excited men in suits. Can you guess which?

3GSM 2007: Will MusicStation be a mobile iTunes beater?

That’s certainly how Omnifone, the company behind the new mobile music service, has been spinning it in a series of pre-briefings to journalists this week.

MusicStation is a music subscription service for mobile phones, where you pay £1.99 a week for unlimited downloads of songs to your handset over the air via 3G or 2.5G, although there is a £2.99 a week option which also includes downloads to your PC or Mac.

Omnifone announced the service today, but it’ll be offered by mobile operators, with 23 having signed up already, including at least one in the UK, thought to be Orange or Vodafone.

There’s a certain amount of hype around the announcement - Omnifone says it’s the first time 2.5G subscribers have been able to download full songs over the air, despite O2 having done this in the UK several years ago.

However, Omnifone was bullish when it talked me through the new service, pitching it as a direct rival to Apple’s iPhone’n’iTunes combination.

“Apple’s iPhone announcement has shaken up the mobile industry,” says co-founder Rob Lewis. “It’s created a lot of concern among the operators and handset manufacturers in Europe. Apple is looking to take a significant amount of market share from the manufacturers, while the operators see it as taking them out of the loop in terms of full music track sales.”

Hence MusicStation, which Lewis says will offer an iTunes-like experience on 75% of phones available right now, rather than just one. It’s an application that’ll come preloaded on phones sold by participating operators, although on certain phones you’ll also be able to download it to your handset.

But hang on a minute. Most operators are already selling full music tracks on their portals. Lewis says that MusicStation is designed to be complementary to this, rather than compete. However, he’s not exactly brimming with praise for what the operators are doing already.

“Most mobile operators are aware that their WAP service doesn’t look like a Rolls Royce product compared to the iPhone,” he says. “Our service is complementary to that.”

MusicStation WILL include digital rights management (DRM) technology within the application, to keep the record labels happy and ensure users can’t pass on songs willy-nilly. Sorry Steve Jobs, this pesky DRM malarkey won’t go away just yet.

But perhaps the most exciting element of MusicStation is the community aspects, which include charts of the tunes that are being played the most by users, the ability to create playlists which other MusicStation users can view, and send messages back and forth recommending tracks, albums and playlists.

There are also other connected features. “We’re constantly holding on the server details of your favourite music, playlists, friends and your personalised tastes,” says Lewis. “If you break your phone, or have it stolen, you can go into your Vodafone shop, get your new MusicStation handset, and when you connect to the network, all your favourite tracks and playlist data will be back.”

MusicStation will also include a personalised news service, where you can receive messages from artists that you’ve opted into (say U2, or Kylie Minogue) giving info on gig dates, ticket sales and new releases. On paper, MusicStation sounds ace – the application itself will hopefully be on show at 3GSM this week so we can get an idea of whether it lives up to it in practice.

But one thing is niggling me. Is iPhone really such a big threat to the mobile manufacturers and operators? After all, it’s expensive enough that it’ll be a niche, even if Apple does sell 10 million of the devices. So why should the mobile operators rush to adopt MusicStation over their own services?

“Apple is looking to take as much market share from the manufacturers as possible without doing anything to support the existing supply chain,” says Lewis. “The mobile industry, be it manufacturers or the operators, is desperately keen to make sure consumers have an alternative choice that’s differentiated.”

It sounds great. Let’s hope it’s not too long before us Brits get to try MusicStation out, to see if it really is an iTunes-beater.

Omnifone website

Tom Baker sings Kinks' classic, charity download-only track for Shelter

Former Dr Who (and Little Britain voice) Tom Baker has recorded a new version of The Kinks' classic "You Really Got Me" as a charity single for Shelter.

The festive download-only single is part of BT’s Text Aid charity initiative, which sees the legendary Dr Who actor return as the voice of its text-to-landline service which converts texts sent to landlines into speech. From now until 8 January, BT will donate 2p for every text message sent to or from a BT landline, and all proceeds from the charity download, directly to Shelter.

On Christmas Day, a staggering 129,341 children in England will wake up homeless, and BT hopes to raise at least £100,000 to support Shelter's vital work.

The track is available to download today for just 79p from 7Digital and from a range of online retailers including eMusic and iTunes. In addition, 2p from every text sent to or from a BT landline between now and 8th January 2007 will be donated to Shelter.

Wendy McMillan, general manager of BT Retail, said: “The Text Aid campaign is designed to offer fun and different ways for everyone to get involved in raising money for Shelter at this critical time of year.

“To get people into the sprit of the campaign we’ve brought back Tom Baker as the voice of our text-to-landline service and used his computerised voice to launch him as a virtual pop star, performing a new dance take on an old Kinks classic!”

BT Text Aid

Related stories: Cancer charity turns to text | Save the Children is first UK charity to enter Second Life | The search engine with a heart | Make money from your old mobile phone

Record your own personalised mobile ringtones with ReVoice Singtones

A new service lets you record a personalised mobile phone ringtone by recording your voice to hits from the world's best artists. It features voice synchronisation and enhancing technology, apparently the same as used in professional music and movie studios.

ReVoice Singtones can be created from your mobile phone or a PC, by downloading the Singtone Studio programme. Of course you'll need an external microphone for recording your dulcet tones.

It's not a subscription service - you just pay for the tone when you send it, and many of the tones are free during the site's introductory period.

The tones are either MP3 or AMR format, and the phone must be able to connect to the Internet to download the tones. Paying for tones can be done by having an account with O2, Orange, Vodafone, or T-Mobile.

Singtone

Related stories: Crazy Frog on your PS2 | Kids to spend over four grand on ringtones | Skype launches licensed music ringtones

Simon Webbe launches 3's MPops - the mobile Top Of The Pops

We previewed Mpops a couple of weeks back, said to be 3's version of Top Of The Pops for mobiles. Well, you can find out for yourself if it lives up to the hype, with the show available to view from today, with guest presenter Simon Webbe (the bloke that used to be in Blue) .

The interactive mobile broadcast will go out live every Friday afternoon from today (December 1st), but only to 3 customers. In the first episode of MPops, Simon Webbe will run through the top selling tracks of the week, previewing an exclusive video, interview or behind the scenes gig. Viewers will be able to interact during the show with instant downloads of the tracks featured, including videos and realtones as well as competitions.

According to Graeme Oxby of 3, "The Top of the Pops’ audience hasn’t disappeared - they simply aren’t sitting in front of the TV anymore. So instead of having to sit around waiting for the audience, we’re taking a chart show to them"

3 website

Nokia World: Nokia declares war on the iPod!

Or, in their words: "I don't see any reason for standalone MP3 players to exist in the long-term. There's no reason for standalone non-connected MP3 players. You have a worse experience."

That's what Nokia's Tommi Mustonen said earlier this afternoon, admittedly in answer to a direct question from a journalist on whether Nokia is predicting the death of the standalone MP3 player. Gotta love those leading questions.

And happily he had the balls to take the question head-on, although not so far as to offer Steve Jobs out for a fight while smashing an iPod to bits with a big hammer. If I ever go into PR, that's the kind of thing I'd suggest. Meanwhile, Mustonen also outlined some of the other stuff Nokia is doing in the music field.

A lot of it was fairly standard stuff, about how music is a huge part of Nokia's N-Series multimedia computers (NOT mobile phones, remember), and how people are using them heavily, whether it's buying music on the Internet from services other than iTunes and loading it on to the devices, or ripping their CD collections and transferring them over.

He did mention Nokia's policy of putting a standard 3.5mm headphone jack on the N-Series handsets so that people can use their normal headphones – which other manufacturers haven't quite got round to doing yet – and also talked figures, saying that Nokia has effectively sold more than 100 million MP3 players in 2005 and 2006.

Someone did ask the question of whether all the people who buy these MP3-capable phones are actually using them to play music, and Mustonen replied that in a study of Series 60 users, 64% are using their phones to listen to music several times a week or more.

Interestingly, radio is increasingly seen as an important feature by Nokia, so they're going to be putting it across the device range – I'm not sure if this is just N-Series or all the company's mobile phones – and has also developed a Station Directory database of over 100,000 radio stations around the world, which the FM tuner on your phone will be able to access to give you details of what's available. This year alone Nokia has sold 150 million FM-radio-enabled devices, y'know.

He also talked podcasting. "It's probably the fastest growing audiocasting phenomenon at the moment," he said. "Our podcasting application allows device owners to go out to the Internet and start searching for podcasts, subscribing to them, and then getting them delivered direct to the device using 3G or wireless LAN. It's clearly highlighting the importance of connectivity, as there's no need to use your PC with this application."

He also waxed lyrical about Nokia's new Music Recommenders service, which has 40 or so independent music shops around the world picking their favourite new tunes, which can then be bought by users. David Bowie is involved somewhere along the line too.

"It's a different approach to most recommendation engines out there," said Mustonen. "We wanted a human recommendation engine. Say I like reggae. I will subscribe to recommendations from someone in Jamaica who's lived his whole life around reggae and knows everything about it. And if I like it, I can buy it."

Next year, as previously announced, Nokia will launch some kind of bigger music download store. But the iPod was never far from the minds of us listening hacks, especially when Mustonen talked about how mobile phones' key advantage is connectivity. I've been reading Apple iPhone rumours on the internetweb for years now, and sooner or later it'll surely happen. What then for Nokia?

"There is a possibility that different players will come into the market," he said. "But if MP3 manufacturers are going to implement a phone feature, bringing in connectivity and other mobile features, they are basically doing multimedia computers and directly competing with us. And that's competition we're happy to take, and we plan to win that game."

Other stuff from this session: Nokia is keen to get USB 2.0 into its music handsets, especially the ones with larger hard drives inside, to make transferring a stack of tunes across quicker.

And fear not Mac users, there is apparently already software available on the Nokia website allowing you to sync songs you've ripped to iTunes (as opposed to bought) with your Nokia handset. I'll have a look for it and post a link once the conference is over.

OUR OTHER NOKIA WORLD COVERAGE
Are you a life juggler or a technology stylist?
Geek TV crosses Miami Vice and Dom Joly with YouTube and, er, breasts
Hands On talks football, mobile advertising, and its Mobizines rival
Refresh Mobile talk about their award-winning Mobizines
Fancy a 100GB mobile phone with a built-in projector?
Next-gen N-Gage to work on 5-7 phones from Day One
Ruud Gullit on gadgets and marriage: "It's like warfare..."
Two mobile phones and one DJ Slow...
Nokia promises WiMAX handsets in 2008
Tech Digest goes to Nokia World

Nokia World: Two mobile phones and one DJ Slow...

Vellu Maurola is a very cool man indeed. Not just because he has cool hair, calls himself DJ Slow, and is DJing at the Nokia World conference using two N91 mobile phones connected up to a set of decks. Although that is pretty cool. But because he made them himself. I caught up with the Finnish DJ as he dropped (is that the right word?) Peggy Lee's 'Fever', to find out more.

"It's a mobile setup that I invented a couple of years ago," he says. "You have these MP3 controllers in the software, and the phone is connected via USB as an external hard drive, so you can browse the songs. I only need one device to play the songs, but there are two reasons why I have two. First, if one crashes, I can use the other one. And second, it looks much better!"

Vellu actually had to hotfoot it from Amsterdam Airport this morning to make it to Nokia World on time, which he says shows one of the benefits of using mobile phones to DJ – they were stashed in his hand luggage, so no risk of losing precious records that are travelling in the hold. "Size matters, as it always does!" he chuckles.

But is DJing with a pair of mobiles really as good as other forms? "Playing with these, it's almost the same as playing with CDs, but only 60% the same as playing with vinyl," he says.

"One thing that's different is that you're browsing through file names, which is weird for me, because I like to see things, y'know, colours and shapes. Maybe one corner of a record sleeve is broken, for example, and I will remember that it's good. It's confusing when you only see file names. Maybe the answer will be to have a small picture on the screen of the cover like iTunes does."

Besides the N91s, Vellu uses the XP10 digital DJ player, and its Bison software to control the MP3s. He says it's solid and reliable, even if it hasn't got loads of flashy bells and whistles. Besides roaming the world as DJ Slow, Vellu records his own stuff, and runs his own company called Slow Music Design, which produces music for films, adverts, events and parties. So is Nokia along the right lines with the stuff it's doing in the music field?

"Yeah, it's very interesting," he says. "Music moves your feelings very much, so now that we have these kinds of devices which can play music, why shouldn't we push it? I feel it's very nice."

Find out more about DJ Slow here. As I write this, the crowd's not quite warmed up – most of them are still swapping cards and gabbing about 'value propositions'. But don't worry. "They'll be dancing within 30 minutes," says Vellu. "Don't you worry about that..."

Nokia to launch music download service with key independent record shops

Nokia will tomorrow launch a new music download site which will let users buy tracks from 40 of the world's most influential record stores, including London's Puregroove records, New York's Fat Beats, Chicago's Reckless, Berlin's Hard Wax, Tokyo's Mona Records, and Rio de Janeiro's Modern Sound.

Users can sign up to musicrecommenders.com free, and receive personalised recommendations every month. The site will also offer artist interviews, city music guides compiled by the independent record stores, and background on the stores themselves. Recommended tracks from any of the 40 stores will cost 89p.

As an added bonus, David Bowie will be contributing exclusively to the service every month and sharing his personal music recommendations.

"Waking up to a new sound or new band is something that makes my day just that bit more exciting,” said David Bowie. “Unfortunately, so much music goes unheard, especially things that don’t bow to the mainstream. Music Recommenders help navigate the undiscovered music that is out there.”

"We wanted a music service which offered music fans the chance to explore new music from all corners of the world that most of us would never normally get to hear. We've recruited the most knowledgeable people, from the best record shops around the world, whose day jobs are to listen to thousands of tracks every week and recommend the best." explained David Roberton of Nokia.

a href="http://musicrecommenders.com/">MusicRecommenders.com opens tomorrow.

Sony Ericsson launches M-Buzz - a new music mobile download service

Sony Ericsson is launching a music download service under the name M-Buzz. However, this isn't another big name music download service - this one focuses on new music for Sony Ericsson handsets.

M-Buzz will be a promotional space for breaking new and developing artists. Music will be available via a revamped version of the company's PlayNow service and the web. As well as full songs, the site will feature videos, biographies, gig schedules and other related content. The first batch of artists featuring will be courtesy of  Sony/ATV Music Publishing, after the company signed a deal to showcase a limited number of its artists and bands each month. 

The first phones offering M-BUZZ will be the W850i and W950i Walkman phones announced earlier this year and scheduled to ship in Europe during the second half of 2006. M-Buzz will go live on October 2nd, with downloadable content gradually phased for the 20 countries currently accessing Sony Ericsson’s PlayNow service. 

M-Buzz website

Apple iPhone would flop, UK survey suggests

A recent survey suggests that a next-generation iPod phone (dubbed the iPhone) would not be a huge success, despite the Apple-fan rumours going round that appear to be clamouring for it.

A digital music survey of 3000 British consumers suggests that most people would either keep phone and music player separate, or want a phone that plays music rather than a music player that makes phone calls:

• 46% of those surveyed said they would prefer to use a phone that played media files.
• 21% said they'd use a music player on its own.
• Over one-third said they'd never use a combined phone and music player.

Over-45s were the most reticent about using a combined gadget, whereas most teenagers - whilst open to using an integrated machine, would rather use a phone that played music than a phone-enabled MP3 player.

Analysts say it reinforces figures that show iPod sales slipping whilst music-enabled mobile phones increase in popularity.

And yet, despite all this, yet other figures show that only 25% of people want to download music onto their phone at all.

So what have we got here? Well, if people are into downloading mobile music at all, they'd rather do it on something that's a phone that happens to be able to play music, rather than on an MP3 player that happens to be able to make phone calls. I don't understand the major difference myself, but I guess it's all about perception.

Would you use an iPod phone?

Monday interview: Ex Bang & Olufsen chief Anders Knutsen on why 3D mobile audio is the future

It's fair to say Anders Knutsen's time as CEO and president of hi-fi firm Bang & Olufsen was a success. The figures speak for themselves - record-breaking profits and a soaring share price - but under his leadership B&O managed to turn round its slide into irrelevancy and become that rare thing: a truly cool technology brand. By which I mean that even if you couldn't afford to actually buy any of its hi-fis, you could at least dribble over the pictures of them in magazines.

Anyway, Knutsen doesn't have anything to prove after his time at B&O, so what's he doing joining the board of Brit startup Sonaptic, which makes 3D-audio technology for mobile phones? He spoke to Tech Digest on why he made the leap into the world of mobile surround-sound, how it will shift more high-end handsets, and whether mobiles could eventually displace the humble hi-fi from your living room.

Let's start with Sonaptic, which recently announced that its Sonaptic Sound technology is now inside more than 10 million mobile handsets through its partnership with Texas Instruments – even if many of those are in Japan. Over here, you might have seen (or rather heard) it in the Sharp 903, which came out on Vodafone last year (left).

Surround sound for mobile music and TV are the main draws, although it can also be used to make mobile games more immersive. So what hooked Knutsen?

“I didn't know the company before they contacted me, but they gave me a demo on a phone, and I was really impressed with how much better it was than listening to music with a normal headset,” he says. “It reminded me of when at Bang & Olufsen, we said instead of standing outside the concert hall, we were going to move into the concert hall and sit in the middle. That's how Sonaptic's technology sounded to me too the first time I heard it."

One of Knutsen's main jobs at Sonaptic will be to get the firm's technology installed in more handsets in Europe and North America. But do mobile users really want surround-sound in their phones? After all, decent stereo would be a start for many handsets if you're listening to music.

Knutsen is even-handed, admitting that mobile music has always been about convenience rather than quality. However, he believes that's beginning to change, albeit slowly. It's a sales problem more than anything though – how do people know they want 3D sound until they've heard it?

“Never ask consumers what they would like, as they really do not know!” says Knutsen. “They want what they have today, and are very seldom able to express what new features they would like. But there have been a few articles on headsets and mobiles, and how important sound is, on the  basis that 3D sound is better, so some customers will ask for it.”

Knutsen doesn't think people would buy handsets today solely because they offer 3D sound, but says it can become one of the expected features on top-end handsets, including those focusing on music. One intruiging question is whether mobiles will ever be used in the home to play music, as well as out and about. You can already plug some phones into your TV to watch video clips full-screen, so will the same thing happen with your hi-fi?

“Mobile playback devices are going to play a bigger and bigger role in the future,” says Knutsen. “You can imagine that one day you'll simply use your mobile device as your domestic playback device too. You can never have as good an experience as with fantastic loudspeakers, but you can get close to it.

But wait a second before chucking your B&O speakers in the bin. Knutsen says the focus of Sonaptic's business will continue to be mobility, rather than trying to kill off the hi-fi manufacturers' business.

“I don’t feel the target group is what you call the hi-fi nuts, the audiophiles who are really passionate about movies and sound,” says Knutsen. “You cannot get the same quality experience when you are running around as when you are sitting quiet in your room. But it’s about the convenience.”

Rather cheekily, I wonder whether Knutsen thinks there's a role in the mobile space for traditional hi-fi firms like B&O, maybe with super-high-end music handsets? Of course, that's a road B&O has already gone down with Serene, a concept handset announced last year together with Samsung (right). It promised to offer "the purest relationship between function and form" – with a £1,000-plus price tag to match.

“Well, I'm not that fond of it,” says Knutsen. “It has two names, Samsung and Bang & Olufsen. That would have never happened in my time. But it does show that design elements can be very important.”

Samsung's swinging X830 music phone heads to Europe

Slider phones are just so yesterday - if you want to be ahead of the crowd, you've got to swing - with a phone like Samsung's X830 music phone.

The swing aspect quickly transforms this miniature to gadget from pocket MP3 player to cool mobile phone. Not sure you'll look all that cool taking a call with it, but your Bond-style phone should impress the office. The phone has 1GB of storage, which you can boost by card. Formats supported are MP3, WMA and OGG and once you've loaded in your music, you can browse it easily by artist, title or album. The GSM phone also features a 1.3MP camera.

Already available in Korea, the X830 should be available in the UK around October. Prices and networks to be confirmed.

Samsung website

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Nokia jumps on music store bandwagon, teaming up with Loudeye

Nokia may be looking to challenge Apple's iTunes service by launching one of its own, as it buys out Loudeye. They're setting their sights on multi-function mobile devices as being the preferred medium for enjoying music, through Nokia's own products like the N91.

Nokia sold more than 15 million music-enabled devices worldwide in the 2nd quarter this year, which it claims makes it the world's largest manufacturer of digital music players (hmmm).

They're confident that Loudeye, who currently provide the service for a large number of online music stores including Oxfam's Big Noise Music, MSN and MTV, have the experience, and rights to a substantial quanity of music, to make this a success.

It will be interesting to see how quickly this is taken up. Apple have done well (despite criticism) by tying in the iPod to its iTunes store, and I wonder if Nokia will do the same with its handsets.

One of the big pains I foresee, for anyone who has both a Nokia music phone and an iPod, is DRM headaches and the inability to transfer music. Particularly if the services end up having different music catalogues, users could end up with their collections scattered across different devices that won't communicate with one another - hardly the integrated digital experience.

What do you think? Will this deal make Nokia a serious contender in the market, or will they just be another bit-part player against the giant of iTunes?

Apple Rumour of the Day: The iPhone

Apple Rumour: The iPhone

I love Apple rumours, don't you? It's certainly one of the companies everyone loves to speculate about, even though we know that nothing's certain until Steve Jobs sings.

What's quite cool (for a while) is the amount of spoof product and ad shots that people seem to spend a lot of time concocting. Some of them are quite convincing, too. Here we go with the iPhone.

The Rumour Mill Says...

MobileMag are just one site that have published the spoof Apple iPhone ad. Yeah, someone's got the 'Apple font' and the white background and suddenly they're on the PR team. "Everything you expect from a Mac, from a phone" is the tag. "Say hello to everyone" another one beams.

Join the club, watch the "iPhone Ad" on YouTube.

See how many old adverts someone has clipped together or Photoshopped to create it. Convincing? Maybe not, but it seems to well up the hope that many Apple fans have for another way to bring Apple into their life.

It's easy to lose count of how many previous rumours have been off-the-wall and proved wrong when Steve actually starts talking.

Next time he'll talk is on Monday, August 7th at the World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC06). We'll see what happens (and of course we'll tell you about it).

Finally, you can play WWDC Bingo, courtesy of Ars Technica - can you get five rumours in a row?

Rumour Rating

Well, this one's been rumbling on and off for a while. Do Apple really want to get into mobile phones? How does it fit into their digital lifestyle strategy? Will the iPod generation and Mac addicts really want to commit another part of their lifestyle to Apple?

My feeling is it's fairly likely. Whether it gets announced on Monday is another matter, but so I have a bigger chance of looking stupid (hey, why not) I'll rate the likelihood of Mr Jobs unveiling an iPhone (or similar device with a different name) on Monday - 60%:

So what do you reckon? iPhone, anyone?

Mobile music downloads set to increase, but ringtones won't die

Jupiter have done some research that suggests that global downloading of music to mobile phones will reach $14bn by 2011.

The kings of download at present are ringtones, which account for 81% of all downloads, but real music downloads will increase from 9% to 32%, taking away some of their annoyance value. It's all fuelled by an increase in 3G networks and music handsets.

Fortunately, or not, depending on your aural sensibilities, ring tones aren't going to vanish completely. After all there'll always be teenagers on trains that need some way of annoying business commuters...

HMV introduces Txt2Buy shopping with a mobile phone

HMV, in conjunction with Digital Rum, has launched a new service allowing customers to Txt2Buy CDs, DVDs and games directly from their mobile phones. The Txt2Buy service allows customers to respond immediately to HMV adverts appearing in the press, using their credit/debit cards to buy products wherever you are in the world.

From 5th June, HMV will place a series of adverts in national magazines and newspapers with a unique ordering code for new music, film and games titles. Text back to a shortcode number, and receive a mobile internet link to a secure site where you can pay using your credit/debit card details.

With the order complete, the album, movie or game is posted out. No pre-registration is required, though there is the option of saving card details to a secure 'mobile wallet' to speed up subsequent purchases.

Visit the HMV website for further details

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Shazam launches music discovery engine

Shazam, already loved by many music fans for its mobile music recognition service, has launched what it describes as the world’s most comprehensive music discovery tool.

Using Shazam’s Ultimate Music Discovery Engine, you can now not only recognise (or 'tag') tracks by pointing your handset at a music source when you're out and about, but also purchase related products. Once you receive the music recognition result by SMS, you can now choose to buy ringtones, music downloads, wallpapers, CDs or gig tickets through leading industry such as Amazon, Ticketmaster, i-Tunes and Kelkoo either via WAP or later on via your PC.

Details of all tracks tagged are stored on a personal page at the Shazam website, allowing you to build up a collection, share information and be part of a music community

The service is based on a subscription - tag unlimited songs for just £3 per month, or for £4.50 you can tag an unlimited number of songs and receive two additional products - either ringtones or full track downloads.

For more information visit www.shazam.com

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Mobile network 3 claims key role in Gnarls Barkley Crazy download story

You probably already know plenty about Gnarls Barkley the band who went from zeroes to heroes last week when their single topped the UK charts without any of their CD singles ever going near a record shop.

Well possibly the most intriguing part of this whole downloads beats CD single scenario is that mobile apparently had a huge role in the track’s success. Phone company 3 is claiming that as much as 20 per cent of the total downloads were straight to mobile through its network. Apparently the track is the fastest ever moving audio download on the network with as many 6000 people grabbing it on a daily basis.

Hazarding a guess I reckon much of the success of the 3 download is because, unlike some rival networks, it offers dual downloads with people paying once for a track that lands on their phone the instant they choose it and can then be claimed for playback on their PC later. Also if 3 had 20% of the downloads, how much came from other networks? There's a real possibility that as much as half of the download of the track could have been via mobile phone companies.

3 is also offering tracks throughout April and May for 99p each – much better value than the rather extortionate prices it and some of its rival networks initially charged for audio tracks.

Mobile downloads without the data charges

In what could be a very significant step for the mobile download market, mBlox, in conjunction with New Visions and record labels V2 and Ministry of Sound, is offering 'single price' full track music downloads without additional data charges.

Currently, if you want to download a track, you're looking at the cost of the track and the cost of the data traffic to deliver it, which could mean a 1MB download costing £1.50 track plus an additional £8 in data charges - the cost of going buying the album at a supermarket.

mBlox has worked with Vodafone to agree on wholesale data tariffs, meaning Vodafone customers downloading tracks from the MoS or V2’s WAP sites will not incur any data charges on their mobile phone bill beyond the list price of the song. mBlox claims it should also mean a wider variety of tracks available for download, with users not limited to the selection of hits offered through the operator's mobile portal.

Orange is expected to offer a similar arrangement soon, with the remaining UK networks following suit over the next few months.

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Nokia AD-42W Wireless Audio Gateway

Not content with dominating the mobile market, the big phone firms now want to control your home audio too. Sony's MP001 dock offered "room-filling" sound from your phone, now Nokia has introduced the AD-42W Wireless Audio Gateway, a bluetooth device which streams to your  home stereo.

The Nokia Wireless Audio Gateway AD-42W allows you to listen to music stored in compatible mobile devices (or a compatible PC) wirelessly on your home stereo. You can also listen via a bluetooth headset. The AD-42W connects to your stereo via RCA cables (included), with set-up claimed to be very simple.

Please note though, the AD-42W is only compatible with devices that have the Bluetooth Advanced Audio Distribution (A2DP) -profile. This is currently just the Nokia 8800/8801 phones (software version 3.94 or newer), but Nokia claims that several devices supporting A2DP -profile are in the pipeline for later this year.

No price as yet, but expect it in the second quarter of 2006.

More mobile music:
Sony Ericsson MP001 phone dock
Sony Ericsson MDS-60 music phone stand

Sony Ericsson MDS-60 music phone stand

Mobiles are starting to rival portable players now as devices to house your favourite tunes on the move. But sooner or later you'll stop moving - maybe arriving at work, at a friends house or just back home. If you want to play your phone's music without the earphones, it might be worth looking at Sony's neat little solution - the MDS-60 music phone stand.

Tailor-made for the Sony Walkman phone range, just pop your music mobile in the cradle and crank up the noise. It looks good, so ideal to stick on your desk in the office to show off, plus it folds up - so you can take it with you to stop it going walkabout from said desk. It operates from batteries or mains and has speakers covers available in different colours if you want to customise.

The MDS-60 should be in UK stores very soon, price and exact date still to be confirmed.

Via Uncrate

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Hands on with the Sony Ericsson W950

Sony Ericsson MDS-60 music phone stand

Mobiles are starting to rival portable players now as devices to house your favourite tunes on the move. But sooner or later you'll stop moving - maybe arriving at work, at a friends house or just back home. If you want to play your phone's music without the earphones, it might be worth looking at Sony's neat little solution - the MDS-60 music phone stand.

Tailor-made for the Sony Walkman phone range, just pop your music mobile in the cradle and crank up the noise. It looks good, so ideal to stick on your desk in the office to show off, plus it folds up - so you can take it with you to stop it going walkabout from said desk. It operates from batteries or mains and has speakers covers available in different colours if you want to customise.

The MDS-60 should be in UK stores very soon, price and exact date still to be confirmed.

Via Uncrate

More Sony:
Sony launches Memory Stick Micro (M2) for mobiles
Hands on with the Sony Ericsson W950

3GSM 2006: Sony Ericsson 4GB W950i Walkman phone

If you thought the BenQ-Siemens EF51 was the phone for music lovers, think again - the Sony Ericsson W950i Walkman phone, with an impressive 4GB of storage, looks to be a far better bet when it comes to the phone/music player hybrid.

The W950i has a QVGA TFT 2.6 inch display with touchscreen navigation. Its 4GB drive can store up to 4,000 songs and supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, E-AAC+, WAV and m4a formats, which are transferred from your PC via Sony's Disc2Phone software. It also features an FM radio with RDS, graphic equaliser and Mega Bass. Music playback is around 8 hours from a full charge.

The UMTS-enabled phone is also packed with mobile multimedia applications, including web browsing with the Opera 8, push email, video playback and 3D gaming.

The stylish W950i is finished in "Mystic Purple" and should be available in Europe in the third quarter of 2006.

More mobiles:
BenQ-Siemens EF51 music phone
Hands on with the Sony Ericsson K610

3GSM 2006: BenQ-Siemens EF51 music phone

The first batch of jointly-branded BenQ-Siemens mobiles showed real promise, the new EF51 music phone shows that they're not afraid to produce something slightly off-the-wall either.

Rather than a phone with music capability, it's described as "a music device with an integrated mobile phone". From the outside, it does look like portable musuic player, with large keys for music functionality located below the 1.6-inch TFT color display. The EF51 features an FM radio and media player for MP3, WMA, AAC and AAC+ formats, plus you can record from radio to MP3. Best of all, it's got a voice-activated search function for your favourite tracks! Once downside is that storage seems to rely on SD cards, so don't expect a huge capacity.

Oh yes - and it's a fully featured phone with 1.3MP camera with all the keys hidden under the exterior flap. The EF51 will be available in both black and white in the second quarter of 2006, no price has yet been confirmed.

More mobiles:
BenQ-Siemens announces first HSDPA mobile to market
BenQ-Siemens unveils new range of mobiles

3GSM 2006: Motorola adds Windows Media

It may have brought you the iTunes phone, but it seems Motorola isn’t above playing away with some of the Apple music download service’s rivals. At 3GSM in Barcelona it announced a deal to work with Microsoft to port a version of Windows Media Audio player on to its phones.

WMA players are standard on Windows Mobile devices such as the Orange SPV series and Nokia has handsets with Windows Media players on the pipeline. The new WMA friendly phones will apparently be able to download music both over the air via mobile phone networks and play back tracks in the format transferred from a PC.

Expect to see more joint deals in which a user gets at track on their phone and then goes to home to grab the same track as a file for their computer. It is not known whether we'll see more iTunes handsets from the company.

CES 2006: Sony Ericsson's new Walkman phone

Engadget is reporting that the Sony Ercisson mystery Walkman phone is none other than the W810i which has been all over the web for a while. It is a slightly souped up version of the W800 with quad band support and a dedicated music button.

Also on board is a 512MB Memory Stick storage card, a two mega pixel snapper and 1.9-inch 176 x 220 pixel screen. It is due in March. It looks like a decent enough phone, but here’s hoping we get something more exciting later today.

Update** Doh. The W810i is the only Sony Ericsson story in town. Maybe they'll have something really exciting for 3GSM in February.

The Samsung i300 hits the shops

We told you the first mobile with hard drive was imminent and now it's here - the Samsung i300 wth 3GB hard drive is available on the O2 network, combining a phone, digital camera, music player and mobile communication in one rather neat little package.

Music software of choice is Microsoft Windows Media Player 10, which should be familiar to most. Mobile communication is handled by Windows Mobile, allowing easy communication via MSN Messenger, SMS and MMS or through email via Outlook.  The i300 is also "plug and play" - so sharing information between phone and computer is a doddle. You can even use the i300's hard drive to back up critical data on your PC.

Add to that a 1.3 mega pixel camera with both still and video recording capabilities and high-quality dual stereo speakers with Bluetooth capability and you have the most integrated mobile device yet to hit the market. The Samsung i300 is available at O2 now. We're just hoping it's taken up by the other networks very soon.

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Motorola's iTunes RAZR phone

We have just had it confirmed by Motorola in the UK that the latest version of the RAZR phone, the V3i, is in fact iTunes compatible. Apparently it won't work in all Moto's markets, but hazarding a guess here, we reckon that the UK and the US are pretty safe bets. As we mentioned earlier the phone uses Transflash storage cards which go up to 512MB, so you'll be able to get your 100 tunes on there.

So why Moto didn't launch this as the iTunes phone in the first place? It would have saved the company, and Apple, a lot of grief.

**Update**

Here's the official word from Motorola in the UK. 'iTunes will be available on the V3i in certain markets. For those markets a press announcement will be made shortly.'

**More**

Ok, here's another clarification. The initial V3is won't be iTunes compatible. However there will be iTunes versions of the V3i which will be on sale in some countries in the new year and these will be announced seperately. Got that!Phew!

Another 'phone to eat iPod' report

Here’s yet another report predicting that pretty soon we’ll be saying iPod who? and listening to music on our mobiles. The study, Global Tech Insight 2005 from TNS, surveyed 6,800 adults aged 16-49 who own either a mobile phone, PDA or laptop and who access the Internet every week. It found that 19% of all mobile phone owners listen to music on their phones, and that 13% of all mobile users use MP3 or digital music players on their phones daily or weekly. This rises to 18% among mobile users in the UK and to 26% among users in South Korea.

Apparently the factors deterring mobile users from downloading more songs onto their phones are ‘insufficient memory’, ‘poor quality’ of the listening experience and difficulties in downloading, compared to transferring music from other devices. Sound familiar? There’s loads more on the report here

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Nokia's hard disk music phone

Kids to spend over four grand on ringtones

Parents: it may be high time to confiscate that mobile phone. A survey carried out by company Xingtone has found that, on average, youths will spend a phenomenal £4,320 each on ringtones in the next 15 years! Perhaps we should have seen the warning signs in the Crazy Frog fiasco. A lot of this spend has also been put down to the both the high cost of the ringtones themselves and the fact that downloading them often ties you into a contract which is next to impossible to escape. People with daughters aged 10-14 ought to be especially wary of the lure of this most sinister phone fad, with some of those surveyed boasting as many as six downloads per month. Yikes.

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Nokia's ace new music phone

We were going to do a long post about Nokia’s new music phone the 3250, but ShinyShiny got there first. Suffice to say that it looks great, sports a really cool twisty design that makes it easy to use both the music player and the camera, features a cool two mega pixel camera and has one Gigabyte of memory – which mobile spotters will tell you is twice as much as the Motorola/Apple ROKR and the Sony Ericsson W800i Walkman phone. It also has a neat 262k colour screen, Bluetooth and an FM radio. Music playback is ten hours per charge and users drag and drop tracks on to the device (hurrah).

Doh! That’s almost a long post. Over to your Sony Ericsson and Motorola/ Apple…

Nokia postpones N91 until after Christmas - gets WMA support too

Big news from Nokia in that it has decided to delay its N91 hard disk based music phone until the start of next year. It was expected that the handset would be in the stores just before Christmas.

Interestingly Nokia puts the delay down to its plans for ensuring that the N91 ‘will work on the widest range of music platforms and be a true "jukebox" mobile phone.’ "What we basically decided is that we will postpone it a few weeks, push it out to Q1 and do this Microsoft DRM implementation solidly," Jonas Geust, vice president of music in Nokia's Multimedia division, said in an interview with Reuters. This means that that the N91 will almost certainly be compatible with DRM protected WMA files such as those offered by Napster and Virgin Digital.

It will also be customizable so that different networks such as Vodafone and O2 can offer their own music download services on the phone. Nokia said it wanted consumers to be free to choose how to get their music - from CDs copied to a PC, directly from Internet stores, or from their mobile network operator - and be able to harmonise their collections at the click of a button. In case you missed our earlier story the N91 has a four -gigabyte hard drive capable of storing up to  3,000 songs.

Nokia 6630 Music Edition

Crikey, it appears everyone want to launch a music phone today. For after Tosh's new 803 for Vodafone we now have Nokia which has unveiled a new music-friendly version of its 3G phone the 6630. Nokia says its 6630 Music Edition has been ‘designed with enhanced music functionality to make it convenient for you to take your music collection with you while on the move.’ Essentially this means it now comes with a 256MB RS MMC card, a USB MMC/SD reader and the Nokia Audio Adapter and its 3.5 mm stereo jack. It is also available in a few different colours including Rustic Red or Aluminum Grey. The rest of the phone, with its 1.3 megapixel camera, mobile broadband access via 3G, mobile email and streaming video is the same.

To further confuse matters Nokia is also foreign the Nokia Music Pack, which has the Nokia Audio Adapter, the Nokia 256 MB MMC Card, the Nokia USB MMC/SD reader and Nokia Stereo Audio Cable as a kit.

Of course the real Nokia music phone is this one.

Sony Ericsson announces Walkman phones

It seems bleeding obvious to us but now Sony Ericsson is actually doing it: producing Walkman, or should that be Walkmen, phones. According to Engadget, the new range of Walkman/men mobiles, announced at the 3GSM conference in Cannes, will be launched in March.

There aren't too many details at this stage, suffice to say that they will work with Sony's Connect online music store (obviously), will come with decent quality headphones and will have large amounts of memory. Could this be the hit that Sony desperately needs - or will the company's weird predilection for favouring proprietary standards like ATRAC3 doom it to failure?

Music file swapping via Bluetooth

Quick story over at The Guardian about how an innovative new service call Melodeo is coming to the UK. Already a hit in Spain Melodeo enables phone users to swap music files with each other sending them either via Bluetooth or as MultiMedia Messages (MMS). Melodeo, which currently has a deal with the Spanish network Telefonica, is expecting to launch a similar service in conjunction with a UK network. Obviously it isn’t saying which network but all things point to O2.

Once users have the software on their phone they can send a track, or part of a track, to their friend. If the person who receives the track likes it and wants to keep it permanently they simply pay the network to buy it. The inevitable bad news is that the service doesn’t use MP3s, rather the files are in the AAC++ format.

Mobiles not set to take over Music Players

So says the findings of JupiterResearch (a division of Jupitermedia Corporation). The company has just released a report that states mobile phones will not be replacing portable media players "in the immediate future, despite industry initiatives". The report “Music Mobile Phones - Will They Replace Portable Media Players?” concludes that because mobiles are "hampered by a trade-off between size, battery life and ...power demands" their hope for a musical future is ultimately doomed - for the time being at least.

We're not so sure about this, but we're basing that on gut instinct rather than a European survey (like JupiterResearch). It's not clear how many people they quizzed, but we do know that 50% of them said that size was the most important factor when choosing their next mobile phone. Add to this the fact that mobiles are already choc-full of multimedia services such as video playback, megapixel cameras and games, and the result is that battery life cannot keep up with the demands. The upshot of all this is that mobile operators are wasting their time pursuing a mobile music strategy. Barriers such as music licences, positioning of tru music ringtones, and limited storage capacity on handsets, further hampers manufacturers. Sounds like a fairly disheartening report, but we're not ready to believe it just yet. The increase of music players on mobiles seems like the next logical step to us. But maybe we're just hopeless optimists. Grab the full report here.

Nokia to offer music downloads service

Nokia may be lagging behind in the multimedia stakes, but the company seems intent on doing something about its slipping popularity. After Motorola’s recent deal with Apple to get iTunes onto its handsets, Nokia has struck a similar deal with Loudeye.

Loudeye doesn’t actually offer a music downloads service itself, but it does help other companies to set up online music stores. While this may mean that Nokia is intent on creating its own music downloads service, the chances are that it’s an attempt to encourage network providers to develop their own stores. Which will in turn encourage the networks to buy more Nokia handsets.

Many of the networks, such as O2 and Orange, already offer a music download service and this is obviously something they see as a growth market worth pursuing. Offering music downloads to subscribers represents an appealing extra service to customers, as well as a nice little extra earner – especially if a company like Loudeye is doing all the hard work setting it up for you.

With phones already offering music storage and playback facilities, how long is it going to be before iPods and their ilk are an endangered species? While some manufacturers still firmly believe that people will still want to keep their gadgets separate, there’s strong reasons to believe that hybridised mobile handsets will be the way forward – especially if phone companies continue to pursue that market.

Loudeye press release