Forget Madonna and her 278 mobile promotion deals for ‘Hard Candy’. The world’s biggest mobile music star is a 20-year-old R&B singer from Japan called Thelma Aoyama. Want proof? Her single ‘Sobaniirune’ has sold 3.4 million ringtones, two million full-track mobile downloads, and 1.6 million ringback tones. That’s seven million mobile downloads in total! The song’s apparently about her long-lost boyfriend - who’s presumably feeling a bit silly now, thinking about Thelma’s bulging bank balance. Interestingly, the song was released as a ringtone last December, BEFORE coming out as an actual single. That said, its sales were also boosted by its inclusion in a TV ad for Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo - presumably the equivalent in sales-bumping terms to being used for an Apple ad here in the West. Which makes Thelma the Japanese equivalent of Feist or the Ting Tings. Except richer.
Tag Archive for 'Mobile Music'
The UK mobile operators have been offering full-track music downloads for a while now, but they’ve not quite caught on as fast as they hoped. In Japan, it’s a different story.
According to new figures from industry body the RIAJ, mobile full-track downloads increased by 91% last year, and mobile downloads overall (i.e. including ringtones) now generate more than 90% of all digital music sales in Japan.
The growth is being driven by youngsters, who got used to downloading music to their phones rather than to their PCs. However, those pesky kids aren’t doing everything the music industry wants them to – the RIAJ says that more than 400 million mobile full-tracks were illegally downloaded in Japan last year, and has started airing TV ads warning against it.
MySpace has just announced a high-profile move into the digital music retailing space, to compete head-on with Apple’s iTunes. It’s called MySpace Music, and is a joint venture with major labels Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. They’re describing it as a “fully integrated 360 degree global music solution”. Whatever that is.No, I’ll tell you what it is. It goes beyond MySpace’s existing music features - streaming tracks on bands’ profiles - and is basically a platform for artists and labels to sell music and other content on the MySpace Music site, on band profiles, and through regular MySpace users’ profiles too. It includes DRM-free song downloads (so they’ll work on your phone), but also a mobile storefront run by Jamba, which like MySpace is owned by News Corporation.
In short: you’ll be able to buy full-tracks, ringtones and wallpapers from your favourite bands’ MySpace profiles, as well as non-mobile products like t-shirts and gig tickets. It’s all rolling out over the next few months, and since it’s global, it’ll work for us Brits too. It’s a big deal for MySpace and the music industry, although in truth, for us music fans it’s just a (theoretically) easier way to get all this stuff from one place.
Hey, I wonder whether MySpace Music will be available on phones too? MySpace has a mobile site, after all…
David Stewart may not be a business man, but he sure does know when he isn’t getting paid. The former Eurythmics man was recently appointed the founding member of Nokia’s new Artist Advisory Council (how does one get appointed a ‘founding member’? Surely you are one or you aren’t?), which has been set up to make sure that artists receive a fair slice of the digital pie.
And it seems that Stewart is the right man to defend the interests of his fellow artists judging by his incendiary comments this week claiming he wants to “drop the neutron bomb on the old paradigm of the entertainment industry and the way in which it functions.”
Speaking to Reuters, Stewart branded the current situation, “insane,” noting, “They say ringtones is a $3 billion business; I still haven’t seen one cent on a “Sweet Dreams” download. There’s always been a bit of foggy accounting.” Indeed.
Gathering pace, Stewart went on, “I am going to do it… It’s going to be a completely different world. I can send you clips of what I’m working on and you can pre-order it. There’s a dialogue going on so you actually know who your fans are and where they are.”
We are assuming he means figuratively rather than in a big brother like way but in any case it does sound as though Stewart is keen to turn the whole mobile music industry on its head and to the advantage of the artist. Time will tell if mobiles really will become a chief point of delivery for music but evangelists like Stewart can surely only help things along.
(Via mocoNews)
