Clearly I’m a believer in mobile music and its potential. But unfettered hype isn’t what’s needed to realize that potential, hence my skepticism of so many claims coming out of the business. The latest is a claim from somebody from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry that mobile download revenues could overtake those from the fixed Internet by the end of the year. That seems a bit dubious.
Perhaps this is more of a wish from the record industry than a solid belief. Since mobile is such an unfriendly space for file-sharing thanks to high data charges and slow speeds, heavily DRMed download services don’t have much competition. Add to this the reluctance from some carriers to make it easy for people to move music they already own over to phones, and it’s even better for the labels.
What’s more likely here is that the ringtone bubble is starting to pop and the music industry’s already moved on to mobile downloads as its next area of focus. And that’s not necessarily a good thing. If mobile music services are plagued by the kind of short-term profit grabs that are ultimately undoing the ringtone business, it’s never going to realize its full potential. The mobile industry can’t help overhyping things, it’s what it does, and it never works out. Time and time again new mobile technologies and services have been branded failures because the hype that’s been built up around them has raised expectations to levels way above what can be delivered. So between operators, vendors and record labels, it’s hard not to see that happening again in this space.
There’s the opportunity here for a short-term land grab or long-term success. At this point, it’s still up in the air which one companies will go for.
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