The Key To Mobile Music Success: Digital Carpet-Bombing
It’s been noted several times how music companies and mobile operators can’t see past ringtones when it comes to mobile music, using their success to justify high prices for other musical content, with the basic MO of charging more for less. A Verizon Wireless exec gave some insight into how it approaches mobile music, saying the way to succeed is “mining the single approach”. This means pushing a song on kids in every imaginable format — ringtones, downloads, ringbacks, videos and so on — for the two weeks a single is hot. Basically it sounds like thye carriers want to come up with as many different things they can sell to kids, no matter how silly, and take advantage of kids that don’t want to be left off the cool train. It’s the same type of greedy thinking that’s killing the ringtone business, but it’s hardly surprising.
