At CTIA 2008 SF, I met John Orlando, Vice President of Marketing at LiveWire Mobile who was representing both his company and the MEF (Mobile Entertainment Forum), where he is the MEF Americas Vice-Chair. A brief about the two companies: LiveWire Mobile offers mobile personalization by providing ringback, full-track music, ringtone and video services. MEF actively promots the mobile entertainment industry as an identifiable and significant sector, with specific commercial structures and interests.
A few statistics that John wanted to share:
The current US market penetration for ringtones is 20% while ringback tones is 6%. I guess there is still a long way before we hit the majority.
We covered a range of topics during our meeting and here are some of the notes:
Do you think we have reached a saturation point with mobile music?
Actually, we are at the beginning of advanced bundling. This includes ideas like “all you can eat” monthly subscriptions to ringtones as an example. Another is the concept of a theme pack bundle. Users could buy for example, the Top 10 Songs or Latest Hits by a Favorite Artist [for higher price, but overall a lower cost per track to the customer]. It also means that we are starting to understand more about the buying behavior of the mobile user and how we can match that and offer better user interfaces.
How can the friction in buying mobile music be reduced?
We are finding out that best of breed does work. You need more specialized user experiences or focus content searches to get to what you need. Generic search for everything is just not a good enough model to get the customer to the end music track.
Are mobile subscribers fed up with click fatigue in trying to find mobile content?
Search needs to be more personalized to be successful. A good user experience is very important the first time and every time. The moment the customer finds is awkward or gives us, they are less likely to come back and try it the second time. The Sprint Instinct, for example, has a great user experience when it comes to looking for music. It makes it much more enjoyable and optimized to find what you want.
What do you see as an emerging trend?
We are getting to a point where content parody across file types and services is happening. A music file is encoded in various formats, but are treated equally, sold to match the handset and coverage and the versions are the same. [This wasn't the case a few years ago].
Thanks John. Looking forward to more insights from you!
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