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I haven’t been able to write something on the MuLiMob Event last week in London yet so here below some personal impressions. There should be a media page available soon with files from the event at the MuLiMob website but I included already some data here you might be interested in. I have been written more thoughts and reflections on the topic before here and here and here…

Looking at the objectives set, the event was a succes since the primary intention was to bring together the independent record labels and the mobile industry players and to gather some more information on the mobile music market, its players and evolutions.

© Will Dennehy

The event started with a short presentation of Douglas Rushkoff on the threats and opportunities of multilingualism and multiculturalism for independents in a fast progressing and ever-changing digital and mobile world. Douglas made a short videocast at his home because he couldn’t fly to the event. You can view Doug’s thoughts on the gathering here below (click the image).

The panel presentation introduced the situation of independents within the mobile value chain and from each panel members’ experience: the independents, the operator, the manufacturer, the artist.

The overall tone from the independents, represented by Michel Lambot (PIAS) and Simon Wheeler (Beggars) was not really promising:

- “we are not in control of our own music…”
- “too many 3rd parties inbetween to deal with and share rather small commissions”
- “not being visible inbetween the mobile TOP50 offering…”, etc.

And probably they are right but then again one might look at the current situation and look at the new opportunities out there; independents will need to adapt and probably will need to change their current strategies drastically.

I presented a short overview of the mobile music market and its future (2nd part of the presentation). You can download the pdf here. After having brought convergence and the influence of web 2.0 towards the future of mobile into the discussion, David Williams from Nokia explained the manufacturers position: the customer is asking to be able to play any kind of music on his mobile device from any source or any network and that’s what they do and they do it very well I think.

Vodafone, represented by Ed Kershaw has a luxury position delivering music to the customer: traditional ringtones are still doing very well, 3G is still in its early stage and if phones becomes wi-fi enabled, the operators will be able to bill the data traffic… Needless to say everyone is welcome to connect to their global Vodafone Live music offer.

Immediate solutions towards the independents were not presented at this event. A lot of questions did not make it to the panel due to the pretty short timing of the discussion but the event opened the doors for more, it is clear that there is a need for independents to find solutions and keep this discussion ongoing.

Just think about the following issue… Labels make their licensing deals still on a territorial basis (country per country), how to protect existing deals and work out new deals in a digital global space? Even iTunes has created its local shops to work around this issue, I’m living in Spain and cannot buy from the UK shop while I should be able to do that wherever I am…

Convergence might bring in new opportunities for some players but one thing needs to keep the attention though to keep the music market diverse and interesting: power concentration is not a good thing, whether this comes from device manufacturers, operators or portal services…
Maybe the inedependents just need to partner and get organised?

I’m sure the players and the game are gonna look quite different a couple of years from here. If you’re interested in the topic and the discussion, you can subscribe at www.mulimob.org website to stay updated on the project or get directly in touch with me (rudy AT m-trends DOT org).

Personally I would like to thank the panel participants, everyone who attended the event and of course the MuLiMob team who made this all happen. Special thanks also to Graham Brown from DhaliwalBrown for the use of the mobile music market slides and Kosmar for the use of his web 2.0 mindcloud.

tags:
mulimob multilingual mobile music independent mobile music random one crammed discs m-trends.org Douglas Ruskoff