The struggle to adopt mobile phone music

There has been little trouble getting people to adopt mobile music players in the U.S. Apple alone has sold over 110 million iPods to date (though many of them aren’t still in use), and they have four different models of the device in production: the Shuffle, Nano, Video, and Touch. They’ve also sold over 3 billion songs through iTunes, and have become the biggest music retailer in the U.S. However, this success has not translated to mobile phones. While many phones created today are music-friendly — at worst having a built-in media player and at best being manufactured specifically as a music phone — the adoption of mobile phone music has been slow. In fact, only 5.7 percent of mobile phone users reported listening to music on their phones, according to a November 2007 survey. So with this seemingly perfect medium to distribute and listen to music, why has the industry failed thus far?

All-in-one devices

Intuitively, the adoption of music on mobile phones makes sense. By using your phone as a media player, you can avoid carrying around two similarly-sized devices in your phone and your MP3 player. With the rapid integration and use of cameras on phones, one would think that music would be prone to the same phenomenon.

That hasn’t been the case, though. Maybe it’s the fact that you need more than a media player to enjoy music on your phone — while all you need to enjoy your camera is the desire to snap photos. Maybe it’s the way music phones are being marketed. But in any case, mobile phone music has a long way to grow.

But maybe it’s the all-in-one model in itself that is limiting mobile phone music sales.

Competition with specialized devices

I feel that the greatest obstacle in the adoption of mobile phone music services is the fact that a mobile phone cannot compete with a specialized music device. The iPod interface is simple and intuitive. It is designed for one thing: To play your media files. Whereas your mobile phone can be trying to perform many functions: Phone, SMS, browser, media, and other applications.

As the old saying goes, a jack of all trades is a master of none. And it appears that people in the U.S. want mastery over their music experience.

We might start to see more specialized media software appearing on mobile phones as we trend towards smartphone adoption. But to be successful, collaboration with specialists will be necessary. Essentially, the more the user interface resembles a typical MP3 player, the easier it will be to get users to start using it.

Capacity concerns

Another deterrent for mobile phone music players is the inherent lack of capacity. Phones typically have under 100 MB of onboard memory. Because of the various applications already installed, a fraction of that is available for music storage. This means that a microSD card is essential to store any real amount of music.

The first problem this presents is that it’s another cost for the consumer. That’s not a huge problem, though, since 4 GB cards can be found for less than $20. But that represents the second problem: pure storage.

Using myself as an example, I couldn’t possibly boil down my music collection to 4 GB. I have a 30 GB iPod, and it’s at capacity. Yes, I could just cycle through music on the microSD, but that’s too limiting for me. I often don’t know what I want to listen to until I’m about to listen to it. Thus, I don’t like limiting my options. Hell, I’m even a bit dismayed that I have to delete something from my iPod every time I add something new.

At that point, it easily becomes worth the trouble of carrying around two devices.

Digital Rights Management

If you’ve ever bought a song from iTunes and then copied it to another computer, you’ll have noticed a prompt that tells you that you can only copy it a certain number of times. This is called Digital Rights Management, or DRM. It’s basically an elaborate system designed to curb copyright infringement. The problem with it in the U.S. is that the DRM system used by one company typically isn’t compatible with that of another.

That is, if you have a file with Microsoft’s DRM, you cannot copy that file to your iPod. This becomes problematic when talking about mobile music. If each carrier, or each phone company, has a different set of DRM standards, then we’ll see little or no compatibility. This means limited options for users.

Over the air speeds

One aspect which allows mobile phones to stand ahead of traditional MP3 players is the possibility for over the air downloads. Hear a song and want it on your phone (doubling as your music player) instantaneously? Well, that’s something you can do. With your traditional MP3 player, unless you’ve got the iPod Touch, that’s not going to happen.

However, it’s not something we’re seeing a lot of. Of the aforementioned 5.7 percent of U.S. mobile phone owners who have listened to music on their phones, 75.2 percent transfer files from their PC. Only 18.3 percent reported downloading songs from a music service. Of course, there are a few explanations for that, the foremost being that people tend to already own a good number of music files. This means that they’re only buying songs that are new to them.

Transfer speeds may also be playing a part here. Not everywhere in the U.S. has 3G or EVDO capabilities. For those without, downloading music over the air can take several minutes for even one song — think downloading from Napster in the days of dial-up. But even in areas with higher speed data networks, download speeds still don’t come close to home broadband speeds. Not that they’re expected to. But this means that more people will do the majority of their downloading at home and will sideload music on to their phones. Over the air then becomes reserved for impulse buys.

Positive signs

Of course, it’s not all bad in the world of mobile phone music. In fact, a few emerging trends point to prosperity for music on phones. First is the easing of DRM practices. Even Apple is moving in this direction. Instead of software embedded in each file which prevent mass copying, what we’re seeing now is customer data being tagged on each file. This allows record companies to trace any illegally shared files.

This lightening of DRM will be one factor facilitating the adoption of over the air downloads. The more compatible these files are with different players, the more people will be able to access them and use them on different devices.

Data speeds figure to be getting faster in the next two years, too. Both AT&T and Verizon have announced plans for their fourth generation network. Surely, mobile multimedia will get a boost from these increased download speeds. In the interim, there are a number of devices coming out with WiFi capabilities. Yes, you need to find a hotspot, but once you do, you can download files fare faster than you can on a cellular data network.

So it comes as little surprise that mobile music hasn’t taken off yet. We’re still loving our iPods, which present a specialized and intuitive interface. And really, mobile carriers haven’t taken huge strides in promoting mobile music services. Yes, we see things like Verizon’s VCAST and AT&T’s mediaFLO, but there are still issues to be addressed before we can start seeing a widespread adoption of mobile phone music players and over the air downloads.

Filed under : Mobile Music