Pump up the volume

The gauntlets are going down left, right and centre as some of the industry’s biggest players start facing off against each other in the mobile music arena. But the lines between content provisioning and content delivery are becoming increasingly blurred as companies from outside of the content space begin seeking a chunk of the revenue stream.

Nokia set the cat among the pigeons this month, with the promise of a music subscription service that lets users keep their music when they leave. This breaks the mould of the ‘music rental’ service typically favoured by the industry but also puts Nokia in a questionable position with its own operator customers. Meanwhile, the operators’ in house music portals seem to be taking a back seat as third party offerings become more attractive and the music labels themselves scramble to come up with a business model suited to digital distribution of their wares.

Here’s a round up of our recent coverage on mobile music:

3 UK goes radio ga ga

Nokia promises users music they can keep

Nokia gets Kylie before rest of world

Microsoft buys Musiwave for $46m

Mobile music gauntlet goes down

Free Stuff’s the right stuff for 3

Mobile music: quality verus quantity

Operators finally capitulate to third parties for content future