Music on the move: music on a mobile phone

 

Gallery

By Alun Williams

Posted on 1 Sep 2005 at 14:42

Success may be down to a mixture of convenience and the billing mechanism. Mobile users are already used to paying a couple of quid, or more, for a ringtone. A full tune for £1.50 is undoubtedly better value, and unlike downloading on a PC, the bill is 'hidden' in your tariff, rather than appearing separately.

An optimistic six per cent saw an elimination of compatibility problems as another benefit. Whether Symbian versus Windows Mobile platform clashes would simply replace existing desktop divides, there is certainly a potential opportunity for phone manufacturers, such as Nokia, Motorola and Samsung, to enforce a common delivery mechanism on ISP-originating services.

Other possible benefits that were identified included the harvesting of more interesting ringtones, and the convenience of downloading straight to the device, without having to go via an intermediary computer. The latter is a strong point - imagine an MP3 player that could auto-load content?

However, a resolute 36 per cent of respondents said they don't see any benefits of downloading music to a mobile phone.

Problems, problems, problems

Finally, having mooted possible advantages, we sounded out possible disadvantages: Which is the biggest concern you may have about downloading music to a mobile phone?

The clear leader here was poor sound quality (24 per cent) and another obvious limitation was the danger of a phone being lost stolen and losing all the content you've paid for (15 per cent). Of course, it is equally possible for your iPod to be lost or stolen, but here the intermediary downloading preserves a backup.

Another concern was a lack of enough memory to store the music (19 per cent). Historically, of course, phone memory has been limited, but it is worth pointing out that whereas Flash-based players routinely have 512MB of storage, the Nokia N91 has a 4GB hard disk. It seems likely, with technological advances, that this issue is the most likely to be satisfactorily resolved.

Over 17 per cent identified drain on battery as the biggest concern. This, of course, is also an issue for MP3 devices, even if Sony claims 50 hours of battery life for its Bean player. It seems reasonable to assume, however, that the power optimizations that are already being made for mobiles will continue to advance. In the long term, as with the capacity issue, it is easy to believe this will be technically resolved.

Other major concerns included the cost of downloads. When we all have 3G phones - with their 'always on' connection - this need not be an issue, but until then we could be paying twice over (for the cost of the song and the duration of the call). One relevant comment was: 'I will not purchase music from my wireless provider. I just want an mp3 player built into my phone.'

Finally, another problem that was identified was the relatively rapid turn-over of phones compared to other music devices. 'Music files purchased may be tied to my phone so what do I do when I want a new phone in 18 months?' asked one person. A good point and one that the rapidly developing mobile industry will find hard to counter.

Music on the move: music downloads and DRM

The survey was carried out by Demographix.com