Mobile Music - Part 3 - Why have full track downloads failed to reach mass adoption?

To follow along the theme of Music related blog pieces, I wanted to write my analysis of why full track downloads have failed to deliver huge volumes for Mobile Operators. I spent 3 years Programme Managing the France Telecom (FT) Orange Music service deployment, across the European and Emerging footprint. Below is my view of some of the areas that have affected the service uptake;

Digital Rights Management: The long drawn out debate around Digital Rights Management, was an issue from day one. Investment both in terms of cost and time had an impact on the rollout. FT developed their own entity specifically to create a DRM agent. This added a year to mobile music player application development, which meant a tactical mobile internet portal service, at a time when consumers were not in to browsing data using a mobile phone (cost). Some territories worked around this with zero rating of data. Uptake was better. Now we have wholesale data packages, this opens up opportunities again. The WAP music services didn’t make this easy. Apple did - but I’m not talking about web based music downloading, and I haven’t seen any stats for 3G iPhone download music volumes yet.

Content: It was sensible to envisage a group function, within a large Telecoms player, negotiating content deals with the majors for multiple territories, under a single contract. In practice they achieved little. It proved more expensive to sign a deal with say Universal, who wanted minimum guarantees on downloads, paid upfront. The consumer demand for downloads weren’t high enough to warrant this. This lead to individual territories negotiating locally. The result was a tiny percentage of the full track download price as profit. Comms and Promotion suffered as a result. The content catalogue size was also affected, and seemed to offer less than a PC music service.

Usage patterns: Much research has indicated that consumers are not willing to buy music via their mobile phone. They are very happy to play music on it - having side loaded content from their PC, or swapped tracks using Bluetooth, both for free. Music quality For the music purists, the quality on mobile is poorer than other formats. This is due to the codec and bit rate used. The aim being to ensure the file size remains as small as possible to ensure it can be downloaded as quickly and cheaply as possible over-the-air. Still a barrier to mass adoption.

Network speed: At the time of service launch, 2.5G and EDGE were the network speeds on offer. It’s fair to say this didn’t help take off and usage. 3G and more importantly HSDPA have changed the landscape for mobile music downloads. It is now possible to preview a track in 5 seconds and have downloaded it within 25 seconds. This speed change linked with zero rating of data should help stimulate the market.

Commercial models: Being frank, the price of a full track is too high. Bundled offerings have stimulated demand (e.g. 10 tracks for £7) but once the bundle finishes, results show consumers stop downloading. Trials for service such as ‘all you can eat’ subscription services - where in essence you rent music in return for a monthly fee, haven’t really flown. Today we see ‘all you can eat unlimited’ where you own for ever. It is still early days as to the uptake numbers. Ad funded trials for music are taking place. I hear results are promising. We wait for these to be published. This could help stimulate the service uptake?

Also posted on www.welovemobile.co.uk