Mobile music is also called wireless music; it is a kind of service that playing music on mobile phones by downloading from telecommunication networks.
Mobile music includes mobile phone ring tone, Color ring back tone and mobile phone music.
Mobile phone ring tong and color ring back tone are well-known Mobile Value-added service, while mobile phone music is an emerging service and it has a great market potential in 3G Era.
Mobile phone music is the service of playing music files functioned by mobile phone playing software.
There is an inheritance relationship among mobile phone ring tone, color ring back tone and mobile phone music. In 2005, the market scale for mobile phone ring tong will reach 2.8 billion Yuan, tend to be saturation. Color ring back tong market will exceed mobile phone ring tong market with a market scale of 5 billion Yuan by the end of 2005. However, from 2007, the color ring back market will start to decline. Due to the high market demand, start from 2006, mobile phone music market will show a high growth, and its market scale will reach as high as 8 billion Yuan.
The Prelude of mobile phone music market-----mobile phone ring tone
Mobile phone ring tone had its birth in Japan, after great promoted by mobile phone carriers, SP and mobile phone vendors from Japan and South Korea, it has became popular value-added service in the world.
The fast growing mobile phone ring tone market created the new profit increase point for record companies. Mobile phone ring tone has occupied 10% sales of global music market. According to the newspaper of Economist, the sales of mobile phone ring tone have exceeded music CD sales in many western countries. In 2003, the cost charged by music product publishers for mobile phone tone adapted from music products has reached as many as 50 million US dollars to 70 million US dollars.
From the early single tone, mobile phone ring tone has developed to 64-chord, 72-chord, even 128-chord, the ring tone formats such as MIDI, SMAF, RTTTL,WAV,WMA,ARM and STY has emerged. The original ring tone and MP3 ring tone has became the fact on high-end mobile phones, shows the achievement of technical integration between music play and mobile phone ring tone.
Along with the development, the copyright has become an issue; the essential is the fight for mobile phone music market dominance between music producers and SP, mobile phone vendors.
The result for the fight is service providers have to cooperate with record companies and pay for the copyright with a large sum. And on the aspect of profit distribution, record companies occupied 60% to 70% ring tone download profit.
All of those ensured record companies' dominate position in mobile music industry. Record companies become the main content providers, in chare of providing music resource and assort with copyright owners about profit distribution. While service providers are playing the role as distributors in charge of transfer the content to end-users. Moreover, mobile phone carriers are offering service platforms and mobile phone vendors are providing technical support.
Mobile phone ring tone market scale in China (Unit: 100 million RMB)
Along with the integration between mobile phone and digital music player, mobile phone ring tone market is on the way to mobile phone music market.
Mobile phone carriers moved ahead
China Mobile has set eyes on the great market opportunity of wireless music; the company is working hard on the aspects of content and mobile terminal
China Mobile has cooperated with EEG Music and M Dream China to develop the business of mobile phone ring tone download in May, 2004. The company is also trying hard to get music resource from record companies directly.
China Mobile has also cooperated with A8 Limited and MTV China to develop Chinese wireless music market in April, 2005. At the beginning of May, China Mobile launched the music channel on the platform of M-Dream, soon after it launched the China Wireless Music Rank according as the quantity of songs downloaded.
Color ring back tone market scale in China (Unit: 100 million RMB)
After the statistic, we found out that the music on the Rank are mainly provided by large SP such as Tencent and Sina, to record companies, there is a large development space. We also found out those original-made songs are much welcome than other types songs, thus the Rank is also playing the role as a platform to be famous for those music new forces.
Apart from the content, in Aug, 2005, China Mobile also carried out the vendor list of customized music mobile phone including Nokia, Motorola, Sony-Ericsson , Dopod and so fifth. It also worked out the domestic criteria for music mobile phone and started to select the vendors from the list in Sep, 2005. Apart from the mark of China Mobile, the company also demanded to show the symbol of Music on its customized music mobile phones.
Along with the strategy of long-term music mobile phone customization, and the control to music content, by 2008, China Mobile is expected to occupy 60% music mobile phone market shares in China.
As the second biggest mobile phone carrier in China, China Unicom also showed a great interest to mobile music, the company invited famous musician to be the prolocutor of its service of Street Music, this action has attracted a great social attention. China Unicom also launched the service of Street Music Rank to compete with China Mobile.
Mobile phone music market trends in China
The year of 2005 is the starting point for mobile phone music development in China. China Mobile has launch the service called Wireless Music, and China Unicom also launch the service call Music Street, however, both of those service are not real mobile phone music services according to the strict criteria, in fact, the service of Wireless Music is a kind of Color ring back tone application, and the service of Street Music is more like IVR.
According to the mobile phone music development in Europe, Japan and South Korea, it developed along with the 3G networks, and became the killer service gradually. In 2006, 3G networks will start to distribution in China, therefore, mobile phone music will show a fast growth in the year, and its market scale is expected to reach 7.3 billion Yuan in 2007.
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