Trend: Mobile Music Recommendation

Mobile music recommendation services enable cell phone users to receive personalized recommendations directly on their cell phone.

Trend Description:

Cell phones have been much more than just wireless telephones for a while now. Users play games, organize their contacts and appointments, surf the internet, read news, get alerts, locate their friends (GPS), enhance their social network (MySpace mobile), listen to music, watch, create and send streaming media. It just seems logical to enable recommendation services for wireless handhelds (please read our TrendBlog entry about Music Recommendation 2.0). While the first mobile music recommendation services just generated generic results, new services provide results tailored to geographical regions and the individual listener.

Cases:

DoCoMo and Napster
Japanese DoCoMo mobile subscribers can now get high-quality music and ringtone recommendations delivered directly to their phones for immediate over-the-air (OTA) downloading and listening. For this new service DoCoMo works together with the music download service Napster and technology developer MediaUnbound. Unlike other recommendation services that only offer generic recommendations, MediaUnbound provides results tailored to geographical region and the individual listener. The mobile music-subscription service of Napster Japan comes in three categories: Napster Mobile users can select from full songs streamed to their phones, or just ringtones for a monthly charge of ¥315 ($2.60). Alternatively, Napster To Go (¥1,980 or $16.30 per month) allows subscribers to copy tracks from PCs to phones or portable audio players, while Napster Basic (¥1,280 or $10.50) is the PC-only version.

Pandora Everywhere Platform
The Internet Radio Station Pandora let’s users now also create their personalized stations right from their mobile phone. Like on the web site users can rate songs using thumbs up and thumbs down, and bookmark favorite artists and songs. Pandora is designed to let users discover more music they like by creating automatically streaming stations playing songs similar to the ones the user types in. So far the Pandora on the go is available through the wireless provider Sprint for an extra $2.99 per month. Pandora also presented a handmade prototype of a WIFI connect Pandora media player. So far the device is seen as a tech demo only, used to demonstrate the Pandora Everywhere Platform. But Pandora does not deny that the WiFi connected device developed by Zing has a lot of potential. Especially since Muni WiFi and WiMax have the potential to blanket the whole country in a high speed network in the future.

Trend Impact:
Right now there are 2.7 billion mobile phone users worldwide, there are three times as many mobile phones as personal computers. Over a quarter of all Internet access is already from mobile phones. Twice as many people are messaging via a phone than using PC based e-mail . It is just a matter of time when mobile devices will become far more important and powerful than land line phones and personal computers. Mobile music recommendation services  are another step into that direction. And this is just the start.

Thanks to the Pandora Blog
Thanks to MediaUnbound
Thanks to Digital Home

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