Disney, Netflix and the Squeezed Middle: The Real Story Behind Net Neutrality

Unless you have been hiding under a rock this last couple of weeks you’ll have heard at least something about the build up to the decision over turning net neutrality in the US, a decision that was confirmed yesterday. See Zach Fuller’s post for a great summary of what it means. In highly simplistic terms, the implications are that telcos will be able to prioritize access to their networks, which could mean that any digital service will only be able to guarantee their US users a high quality of service if they broker a deal with each and every telco. As Zach explains, we could see similar moves in Europe and elsewhere. If you are a media company or a digital content provider your world just got turned upside down. But this ruling is in many ways an inevitable result of a fundamental shift in value across digital value chains.

Although the ruling effectively only overturns a 2015 ruling that had previously guaranteeing net neutrality, the world has moved on a lot since then, not least with regards to the emergence of the streaming economy across video, music and games. In short, there is a lot more bandwidth being taken up by streaming services and little or no extra value reverting to the upgraded networks.

Value is shifting from rights to distribution

Although the exact timing with the Disney / Fox deal (see Tim Mulligan’s take here) was coincidental the broad timing was not. The last few years have seen a major shift in value from rights companies (eg Disney, Universal Music, EA Games) through to distribution companies (eg Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Spotify) with the value shift largely bypassing the infrastructure companies (ie the telcos).

The accelerating revenue growth and valuations of the tech majors and the streaming giants have left media companies trailing in their wake. The Disney / Fox deal was two of the world’s biggest media companies realising that consolidation was the only way to even get on the same lap as the tech majors. They needed to do so because those tech majors are all either already or about to become content companies too, using their vast financial fire power to outbid traditional media companies for content.

The value shift has bypassed infrastructure companies

Meanwhile telcos have been left stranded between rock and a hard place. Telcos have long been concerned about becoming relegated to the role of dumb pipes and most had given up any real hope of being content companies themselves (other than the TV companies who also have telco divisions). They see regulatory support for better monetizing their networks by levying access fees to tech companies as their last resort.

In its most basic form, this regulatory decision will allow telcos to throttle the bandwidth available to streaming services either in favour of their favoured partners or until an access fee is paid. The common thought is that telcos are becoming the new gatekeepers. In most instances they are more likely to become toll booths. But in some instances they may well shy away from any semblance of neutrality. For example, Sprint might well decide that it wants to give its part-owned streaming service Tidal a leg up, and throttle access for Spotify and Apple Music for Sprint users. Eventually Spotify and Apple Music users will realise they either need to switch streaming service or mobile provider. Given that one is a need-to-have, contract-based utility and the other is nice-to-have and no contract and is fundamentally the same underlying proposition, a streaming music switch is the more likely option. Similarly, AT&T could opt to throttle access for Netflix in order to give its DirecTV Now service a leg up. Those telcos without strong content plays could find themselves in the market for acquisitions. For example, Verizon could make a bid for Spotify pre-listing, or even post-listing.

The FCC ruling still needs congressional approval and is subject to legal challenges from a bunch of states so it could yet be blocked. If it is not, then the above is how the world will look. Make no mistake, this is the biggest growing pain the streaming economy has yet faced, even if it just ends up with those services having to carve out an extra slice of their wafer-thin margins in order reach their customers.

Yonder Music Unlocks The Emerging Market Opportunity

One of the high profile digital music casualties of recent years was the failed ‘next generation’ service provider Beyond Oblivion. There were numerous factors behind Beyond Oblivion’s failure but a key one was the fact the market was not yet ready for its telco bundled music offering. Now 5 years on the digital music and telco content markets are very different propositions, with the number of telco music bundles global totaling 105, up from 43 in 2014.  With the proliferation of data plans and smartphones, mobile carriers are now eagerly seeking out streaming music and video services as a means of driving subscriber uptake, ARPU and market differentiation. The 11.5 million telco bundled music subscribers that now exist globally represent a vibrant marketplace that was almost non-existent back in 2011. So why the potted history? Because, as MIDIA reported back in November 2015 Beyond Oblivion’s founder Adam Kidron is back for another bite of the Apple with a new take on the model with his latest venture Yonder. Now, 7 months after its Malaysian launch Yonder has racked up an number of impressive regional metrics that act as further evidence that the telco market is ripe for music bundles.

Yonder’s partnership with a number of Axiata telcos in multiple markets is off to a flying start. Yonder’s music bundle is available across a range of tariffs including both pre-paid and post paid. With an already sizeable 300,000 strong subscriber base Yonder users are using markedly more data than users of other music services on the same tariffs. But of most interest from a telco perspective is the much lower rates of churn for Axiata’s Yonder users, on both pre-paid and paid. Though these numbers must be caveated by the fact that Yonder is available on tariffs that appeal to Axiata’s most valuable and loyal customers – a caveat that applies to most music telco bundles. But even with that considered, Yonder users have a fraction of the churn even of other same tariff users that do not have Yonder.

Axiata has demonstrated its belief in Yonder by both taking a 25% stake in Yonder and by committing to launching in another 9 emerging market territories, with further markets in the pipeline.

Axiata, Celcom’s parent company, has demonstrated its belief in Yonder by both taking a 25% stake in Yonder and by committing to launching in another 9 emerging market territories, with further markets in the pipeline.

Curation And Pre-Pay Are Key 

Yonder has four key assets that that have driven success so far:

1. A curated content offering
2. A telco optimized business model
3. A focus on emerging markets
4. An offering for pre-pay customers

Emerging Markets Are The Next Big Streaming Opportunity

Emerging markets are the next big opportunity for digital music. Western markets dominated the 20^th century music industry because it was built on buying units of pre-recorded media and thus skewed towards countries with high levels of disposable income. Now though, as we move into the streaming era, it is consumption that is monetized and thus it is the markets with the biggest populations (typically emerging markets) that represent the bigger opportunity. This realignment of the music industry’s world order won’t happen overnight, and the big western markets will still dominate, but a realignment is taking place. The obvious way to capitalize on this is ad supported (which is YouTube’s big play) and indeed that is where the big numbers will come. But it is telco bundles that will drive the meaningful revenue in these markets because:

1. telcos have the billing relationships (a crucial asset as credit card penetration is typically low)
2. telcos can shoulder some or all of the cost to drive data plan uptake and make the music feel like free

Crucially, in order to tap this emerging market opportunity, the standard, premium AYCE offering is not enough. Curation and Pay As You Go (PAYG) bundling are the assets needed to unlock this opportunity and right now Yonder and MusicQubed’s MTV Trax are pretty much the only services bringing this combination to market.

2016 is already proving to be a big year for the big streaming services, but with finite remaining growth opportunity remaining in developed markets, the really interesting long term growth lies in PAYG and emerging markets.

The telco music market statistics quoted in this report are featured in the MIDiA report ‘Telco Music Strategy: Ironing Out The Strategic Kinks As Objectives Evolve’ which is available to MIDiA subscribers and can also be bought individually on the MIDiA report store herebought individually on the MIDiA report store here

This post was amended on June 28th

Music’s Role In Digital Content Is Small And Shrinking

This week I delivered a keynote at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on the future of media. I focused on three key areas of digital content:

• Digital Music
• Online Video
• Mobile Apps

Pulling together these three different strands really shone a light on where music sits in the broader digital economy.  One of the key themes I explored was how the streaming music business relies on pretty much the same model as mobile games like Clash Of Clans, i.e. relying on a tiny share of the total audience to pay. The big difference is that the annual ARPU of a King customer is $290.41 while for Universal Music the annual ARPU of a streaming music subscriber is $29.77.  Universal Music rightly got a lot of attention recently for becoming the first billion Dollar streaming music company. Universal has managed to make streaming revenue scale. However streaming remains a revenue stream that is plagued by free. Only 10% of the total streaming audience (i.e. including YouTube and Soundcloud) is paid, and though this small group generates 71% of Universal’s streaming revenue, the blended ARPU is just $4.15. That’s $4.15 for the entire year of 2015, not per month. You can see my full analysis of how free-to-paid conversion ratios and ARPU compare across big media companies here.

But perhaps most revealing is the relative scale of music compared to everything else. As the graphic below reveals, digital music (at retail values) will be just 10% of digital content revenue by 2020, down from 16% in 2015. So digital music is both small and losing market share. Online video, which is at an earlier stage of its development, is already bigger (at retail value) than the entire recorded music business (at trade value), while mobile app revenue is double that of online video.

Yet music continually punches above its weight. Its impact on culture and emotions far outweighs that of apps (for now at least) and music artists still have far more dedicated fan bases than actors generally do (again, for now at least). Music’s impact is far beyond its revenue, even in business terms. Just look at all the brands, telcos and device companies that fall over themselves to be associated with music.

Nonetheless, the reality that must be accepted is that sooner or later, recorded music’s diminished revenue footprint is going to catch up with it. Major record labels enjoy a privileged position, because rights are so concentrated in music they each have an effective monopoly power because each of them have the power of veto if they say no. (You try launching a mainstream music service without one of the majors). This can sometimes lead to hubris and over confidence. In video and apps, rights are far more fragmented and consequently no single rights owner has market shaping power. (As an aside it is worth asking whether rights concentration is contributing to digital music losing pace with the digital content economy.) The clear risk is that music rights holders eventually overplay their hand, demanding too much from partners with too little flexibility. I have been hearing for some time from a number of ‘partner’ companies that they are beginning to question whether music is worth the hassle. Meanwhile SVOD services and YouTubers are waiting eagerly in the wings…

Another part of the equation is that recorded music revenue only paints a small part of the global music industry picture (i.e. also including publishing, live and merch). In fact, recorded music has declined from being 60% of all music industry revenue in 2000 to around 30% today.  Most artist managers now view recorded music primarily as a marketing platform to drive live revenue. Unfortunately record labels aren’t in a position to think that way.

Whatever perspective you view this from though, one thing is clear, music’s role in the global digital content marketplace is small and shrinking.

Did Anyone Else Notice Amazon Just Launched A Hard Bundled Music Phone?

Amazon’s long anticipated Fire smartphone was launched to much fanfare last night and includes a host of features designed to make it stand out from the pack.  But one detail that seems to have slipped beneath the radar is that, for now at least, it includes a year long access to Amazon Prime, which following last week’s music announcement, includes free access to an ad-free on demand streaming music service.

What this means is that Amazon have launched a smartphone that gives you a year’s worth of unlimited free music.  Six years ago when Nokia tried to do the same with Comes With Music the concept was ground breaking and looked set to change the future of digital music.  But Nokia’s flawed implementation of the proposition scared most of the marketplace away from the device bundle model.  Beyond Oblivion nearly made it work before folding, and its subsequent offspring Boinc and Yonder are each still trying to prove the model.  Rok Mobile are another new entrant.

I still maintain that the device bundle is the best way Apple can extract full value from its recently acquired Beats Music asset but for now all eyes will be on Amazon to see if the model is finally ready for prime time (pun sort of intended) now that it has been sneaked in through the back door.

Got Milk?

Poor Samsung launched their latest punt at digital music success just as Spotify was stealing all the media oxygen with its acquisition of the Echo Nest.  Samsung’s latest venture, curiously called ‘Milk Music’, is another attempt from the smartphone giant to carve out some mindshare and consumer traction in the digital music space.  Like all but one smartphone manufacturer – you know, that one from Cupertino – Samsung does not have the best of track records when it comes to digital music, having recently culled its previous Hub service.  Milk is a Pandora-like mobile radio app and while it certainly suffers from ‘me-too syndrome’ it is not actually a terrible strategic fit.

With 200 stations and a catalogue of 13 million tracks, Milk Music has some muscle but it is hard not to see it as a thinly veiled attempt to ‘do an iTunes Radio’.  However there is not necessarily that much wrong in doing exactly that.  iTunes Radio is a very neat service that is well geared towards the mainstream, less engaged music fan.  That is exactly Samsung’s addressable audience.  Samsung has been at the vanguard of the mainstreaming of smartphone adoption, so much so that many of its devices are smartphones with dumb users.  Milk Music is however limited to the Galaxy range of handsets, which will to some degree filter its audience towards Samsung’s more engaged users.

No smartphone manufacturer has been able to make music work like Apple has.  In fact no smartphone manufacturer has been able to make content and services as a whole work like Apple has.  Apple’s ecosystem is a fascist state compared to Android’s federated democracy, but at least the trains ran on time in Mussolini’s Italy.  That absolute control of the user experience enables Apple to deliver on the single most important part of digital music product strategy: the service-to-device journey.  It just happens, and seamlessly so.  So many other phone companies have failed to understand the importance of this ineffable magic.

Samsung might be able to get it right with Milk Music, but because they are part of the federated states of Android, they will also have to tolerate a bunch of pre-installed incursions from fellow Android states, not least Google’s Play Store.  Apple meanwhile ensures there is just one place for music on its devices.

Samsung desperately wants to make music work and to its credit continues to throw money at trying to fix the problem.  Free radio might just be the best first step.  Especially considering that just 1% of Android consumers state they intend to start paying for a music subscription service and that a quarter of them say they have no need to pay for music because they get so much for free.  Milk Music might be feeding that free music habit, but it could also be the foundation for something bigger and better.  In the meantime, if you can’t beat them…

What Is Really Cannibalising Download Sales

As 2013 music sales figures come in, the picture of streaming growing while download sales slow is coming sharply into focus. It is one of a clear phase  of transition/cannibalization (delete as appropriate depending on your point of view) taking place because the majority of paying music subscribers were already download buyers.  But that is not the whole picture.  There is an even fiercer form of competition for spend that, as far as the music industry is concerned, is inarguably driving cannibalization.

The iTunes Store accounts for the majority of the global music download market and has done so since its inception eleven years ago.  Back when it launched, the iTunes Music Store helped transform the iPod from a modestly performing device into a global hit.  Music was the killer app, music was what Apple used to sell the device and music is what iTunes customers spent all of their money on.  But all of that changed.  As Apple’s devices have done progressively more, Apple has introduced new content types into its store that better show off the capabilities of its devices.  When Apple launches a new iPad it doesn’t have a label exec holding up the new device playing a song with static artwork displayed…that simply would not showcase the device’s capabilities.  Instead an EA Games exec gets up on stage with a new game that fully leverages the capabilities of the iPad’s graphics accelerator, the accelerometer, the multi touch screen etc.

Music may still be the single most popular entertainment activity conducted on iDevices but it is no longer the app that fully harnesses the devices’ capabilities.  In fact because music products and services remain stuck in the rut of delivering static audio files – YouTube notably excepted – it is increasingly failing to compete at the top table in terms of connected device experiences.  Crucially, this is not just a behavioral trend, it is directly impacting spending too (see figure).

Back in 2003 music accounted for 100% of iTunes Store revenue because that was all that was available.  Over the years Apple introduced countless new content types, each of which progressively competed for the iTunes buyer’s wallet share.  The step change though occurred in 2008 with the launch of the App Store.  The impact was instant and by mid 2009 music already accounted for less than 50% of iTunes revenue.   By the end of 2003 the transformation was complete with Apps accounting for 62% of spending and music less than a quarter.  Quite a fall from grace for what was once the undisputed king of the iTunes castle.

Now it is clear that the app economy is a bubble that is likely to undergo some form of recalibration process soon (80%+ of revenues are in app, 90%+ of those are games, and the lion’s share of those revenues are concentrated in a handful of companies) but the damage has already been done to music spending.

If music industry concerns about download cannibalization should be addressed anywhere it is first and foremost at apps.  At least with streaming services consumer spending remains within music rather than seeping out to games.  Though the bulk of the app revenue is ‘found’ incremental revenue, apps are additionally competing for the share of the iTunes’ customers wallet i.e. growth is coming both from green field spend and at the expense of other content types.

So what can the music industry do?  It would be as foolish as it would be futile to try to hold back the tide. Instead, music product strategy needs to do more to embrace the app economy.  That means, among other things:

• More fully leverage in-app payments (and that means labels will have to take some of the hit on the 30% app store tax)
• Learn to harness the dynamics of games (that does not mean ‘gamify’ music products necessarily – though it can mean that too – but to understand what makes casual app games resonate)
• Develop digital era, multimedia products (see this report for some pointers on where music product strategy should go)

Though we are nowhere close to talking about the death of music downloads, apps have turned the tide for music spending.  The music industry can either sit back and feel sorry for itself, or seize the app opportunity by the scruff of the neck.

What Beats Music Needs to Do to Be a Success

Next week Beats Music will finally launch, after arguably the most hyped music service launch in the history of digital music.  CEO Ian Rogers published a blog post over the weekend that dives into some of the thinking behind the service and some of its functionality.  Early signs are that it is a well designed and programmed service, but that alone will not be enough to make it a success.

Rogers cheekily labelled competitor services as ‘servers’ rather than services and there is no doubt that Beats Music has put addressing the Tyranny of Choice right at the heart of its strategic mission.  Beats Music has invested heavily in a host of cool features and top quality editorial and deserves great credit for doing so, but it still won’t be enough.  Beats Music is another 9.99 subscription service and 9.99 is still not, nor ever will be, a mass market consumer price point….at least not until years of inflation have taken effect. Just 5% of consumers currently pay for subscriptions in the US and the UK and the lion’s share of that is down to Spotify.

It is a massive – i.e. currently impossible – challenge for Beats or any of its soon-to-be competitor AYCE subscription services to get the headline pricing down – that is instead the domain of a new breed of innovative services such as MusicQubed, Bloom.fm and Psonar. But where Beats does have the ability to at least make their offering feel cheaper is with bundling.  On this front a lot has been made of Beats’ partnership with AT&T.  Though it is great to have such a high profile partner pushing subscriptions into the US it feels like a missed opportunity.

AT&T is a Missed Opportunity

Instead of being a long term bundle, the AT&T deal is in fact a promotional partnership, with three months free before reverting to a full priced $15 p/m deal.  As we recommended in our Telco Bundling White Paper last year, the best practice is to transition to a subsidized bundle with the end user paying either nothing or a discounted rate (much preferable to labels).  While a three month free trial is a fantastic way to deliver value and get users hooked, the leap from zero to $15 p/m is just too big.

Granted the deal is an innovative ‘Family Plan’ but I am not convinced consumers will see the value.  Core to the value proposition is being able to access the service across 5 people and 10 devices, which compared to other subscription services is strongly differentiated.  But multi-device value is actually the value of the label licenses not consumer value.  Apple and Samsung customers do not pay a premium for every additional device they want to play music downloads they purchased from the iTunes and Play Stores.  iTunes accounts are already inherently family plans in many households with no price premium.   As I have been saying for years: we are in the per-person age, not the per device age.  Consumers should not pay a premium for multiple device support. Labels need to accept the realities of the modern day multi device consumer and not try to slice the proverbial baloney.

Artists and Songwriters Will Feel the Family Plan Pinch

Also the Family Plan also raises the tricky issue of whether the fact that this would translate into $3 per head per month effectively means three times less rights pay out per track.  Big labels and publishers won’t feel the pinch so much as they’ll still be getting their 10%/20%/30% shares of revenue.  In fact they’ll be 50% better off as it will be a share of $15 not $10.  But artists and songwriters only have small catalogues of music so they’ll feel the impact of track play revenue being a share of $3 not $9.99.  And given that a family is likely to have diverse tastes, especially between parents and kids, artists are unlikely to get plays across all of the family members, where of course a label with a diverse portfolio of artists will.

It’s the Headphones, Stupid

But enough of the hurdles, I did promise with this blog entry’s title a solution. Despite all of the hype I do genuinely believe Beats Music could be a game changer if it is willing to properly leverage all of the assets at its disposal.  Beats has a hugely valuable brand and route to market in its core headphone business.  And although Beats is now facing fierce competition, it remains the stand out youth headphone brand, for now.   As great a partner as AT&T may be, they’ll still most likely only reach the same high value, data plan power user, music aficionado that all the other subscription services have been super serving.  And as such Beats Music will get far less bang for its buck than it should.

Instead Beats Music should focus on hard bundling into Beats headphones with a 3 month free trial followed by a subsidized $5 12 month commitment subscription. It really is that simple. ..well the commercials aren’t but the proposition is.

Among Beats’ headphone customer base are hundreds of thousands of young, brand conscious music consumers that value high quality music experiences and are not yet subscription converts.  If Beats fully embraces its new family member and puts it at the heart of its core product range then Beats Music might just reach a whole swathe of new consumers that the incumbent subscription services have not yet managed to.  If instead it treats Beats Music as an awkward digital appendage then it will wither on the vine.  Here’s hoping Beats opts for the former.

The Tale of Nokia, Mobile First and Sonic Augmented Reality

At Midem this last weekend Nokia announced the launch of Nokia Music Plus, a premium iteration of its free Nokia Mix Radio offering.  For €3.99 per month subscribers get an enhanced personalized radio service including unlimited track skips, unlimited offline playback and lyrics streaming.  From a pure specifications perspective none of that is particularly groundbreaking, but what is interesting is Nokia’s execution as a truly mobile first music service.

When Mobile First Means Anything But 

Many digital content providers are positioning themselves as being mobile first these days, but the results often suggest they are anything but.  Mobile first does not mean simply having most of your customer engagement happening via mobile, nor does it mean focusing your development costs on mobile, heck it doesn’t even mean only being available on mobile.  None of these factors constitute being mobile first, instead they should be natural outputs of a mobile first approach, success indicators of a mobile first strategy.  Being a mobile first consumer offering, at least if we use the term in a strategically meaningful sense, should be about meeting a consumer’s mobile needs in a uniquely mobile way. One that does not just leverage mobile functionality but instead has it at the core of its DNA.  That creates an experience that is so good on mobile that it would be an inferior experience on a PC.

Too often the mobile apps of music services either:

• look like little more than a PC screen squashed into a mobile screen
• repurpose the PC user journey for mobile, splitting it across multiple screens to create a fragmented and disjointed user experience

And When It Really Is

Despite being a mobile company first, Nokia hasn’t always delivered mobile first experiences.  Indeed one of the failings of the much maligned but nonetheless visionary Comes With Music was that it delivered a clumsy and squashed PC experience that masqueraded as a mobile music experience.  But with Mix Radio, Nokia have delivered a truly mobile first experience that sets the bar for others to follow. There is nothing particularly revolutionary in the service, but that misses the point. Nokia have taken the Apple mantra of delivering elegant, seamless user experiences and have run with it.  As the screen shots in figure one show, Mix Radio does not try to cram the screen with metadata and information but instead uses the screen inventory to deliver uncluttered, visually rich content.

I’ve been trying out Mix Radio on a Lumia 920 (which by the way is IMHO Nokia’s best device since the N95 8 Gig.  It is great to see that Nokia has got its hardware mojo back, let’s hope it isn’t too late). On the Lumia 920’s large screen, Mix Radio is a music experience that genuinely feels like a mobile music experience and that does not leave one wanting to switch to a PC screen as soon as is possible.  It isn’t a perfect service, and I am not convinced that the beefed up Music Plus offering will get much traction as a premium offering, but it does set a standard for what a mobile first music experience should be.

Sonic Augmented Reality 

One other feature that Nokia launched on Saturday, but with little or no fan fare, is one of the most fun digital music features I have seen in years: NFC Activated Mixes. The user simply points their phone at one of the NFC targets (see graphic below) and a mix starts playing instantly as soon as the he or she accepts the mix. NFC music is far from a brand new concept but the value of the feature is again all in the execution: point, touch, play.  All in an instant.  And this isn’t just for promoting music, users can use NFC stickers to create their own mixes and leave them anywhere they like.  It is also just as easy to dump a mix onto a sticker as to listen to one – with all the actual music files residing in the cloud so it is only metadata that is being transferred.   And of course, it is again a genuinely mobile first experience.

The opportunities for personal sharing as well as commercial uses are boundless. Cafes could have them at the counter so customers could chose a mix with their coffee. Bars and clubs could have them on their doors to give passing clientele the opportunity to hear what sort of music they can expect inside. (Use cases similar to those, by the way, that Swedish start up TunaSpot has also been working towards with its Spotify / 4 Square API mash-up app).

Though only a small and fun feature, Nokia’s NFC Activated Mixes nonetheless represent the potential of a profound extension of music consumption: making location and context genuine parts of the music experience.  Augmented Reality apps such as Layar have focused, understandably, on augmenting the visual world with mobile context, but this is Sonic Augmented Reality. The next obvious step for music experiences is to then blend sonic and visual elements, but in many ways that will detract from the elegant simplicity of Sonic Augmented Reality. Nokia’s NFC Activated Mixes work because they are quick, simple and non-intrusive.  It is as easy as picking up a free newspaper from the stand at a train station, whereas traditional Augmented Reality apps require a strong degree of consumer involvement.

Nokia are not necessarily reinventing the digital music market – after all they tried that with Comes With Music and got their fingers burnt through to the bone.  But what they are doing is using the already available assets in the digital music landscape to set new standards in mobile first music experiences. Welcome back to the fold Nokia.

Mobile Music, Beyond the AppMobile Music, Beyond the App

Yesterday I delivered a keynote at the Music 4.5 Mobile music conference.  My presentation was entitled ‘Mobile Music: Apps, Ecosystems and the Cloud’ and here are some of the highlights.

I’ve been a music industry analyst for more years than I care to remember and I recall my first mobile music experience being on a Wap 1.0 handset with a monochrome screen and no graphics.  Mobile music has obviously come on a long way since then but it remains hindered by the recurring error of trying to do too much too soon.  Mobile seems to be perennially burdened with developers’ aspirations being one step ahead of what contemporary mobile technology can deliver. Witness the continually delayed arrival of ‘NFC payments are about to go mainstream’ as a case in point.  Mobile music’s poster child Shazam, was itself far too early to market.  I remember being demoed the tech by the founder a decade ago.  It took the advent, many years later, of the iPhone and the iTunes App Store to enable Shazam to become the runaway success it currently is.  Most start ups aren’t lucky enough to manage to wait for the pieces to fall in place.

Mobile music is undoubtedly going through an unprecedented period of buoyancy, perhaps even prosperity, driven by two key dynamics: the rise of smartphones and the app boom.  46% of UK consumers have a smartphone (see figure 1) which at first glance presents a great addressable audience.  But as my former colleague Ian Fogg observed, as smartphones go mainstream we end up with the quasi-paradoxical situation of smartphones with dumb users.  (By way of illustration one panellist referred to a customer request supporting for his HTC iPhone). Most new smartphone users don’t even use a fraction of the functionality on their devices and this creates big problems for music strategy.  Because mobile music apps are inherently the domain of the tech savvy, not the tech-daunted majority.

It is easy to think that the future of mobile is apps.  But as a cautionary tale consider that UK ring tone revenues plummeted by 32% in 2011.  Once ring tones looked like the future of mobile music.  Things change, and quickly so.

Apps are just one step in the evolution of mobile

Mobile Music has had more than its fair share of false dawns, largely because of wrongly set expectations.  The App revolution appears to have finally kicked mobile music into market maturity, though in actual fact it is just one more step on the journey.

One of the key reasons apps have been such a runaway success (Apple just announced its 25^th billion App download) is because they play to the unique characteristics and strengths of mobile as a channel.  They deliver fun and convenient experiences that are typically also social, location sensitive and instantaneous.  All integral parts of the mobile phone’s DNA.

All of which is great of course, but there is a risk that the current infatuation with Apps is a focus on form over function.  Apps may have driven a paradigm shift in mobile behaviour but they are in the end just software.  They are a natural part of the evolution of the mobile platform and experience. They play just the same role as software does for the PC.  But of course we don’t excited about having McAfee and Excel icons on our desktop (see figure 2).  The reason why it feels so different for Apps is because of the channel strategy, namely App stores.  There’s just one place to go and get every type of software you could want, all of course with the same billing details and some guarantee of quality of experience.  A far cry from the PC experience of searching the web for the right software, reading reviews and creating a new user profile on yet another online store, hoping that the retailer is safe and secure.

The history of mobile music to date can be broken down into three key stages (see figure 3):

• Stores
• Apps
• Access

A lot of consumer got burned in that first stage of mobile music stores, finding themselves subjected to poor quality experiences that paled in comparison even to the supremely average contemporary online stores.  The main mistake made was to expect too much from the rudimentary technology that was available: handset memory and screens were both too small and connectivity was far too slow and patchy.  WAP 1.0 and GPRS simply weren’t music delivery technologies.  The first stage of mobile music development failed because mobile tried to be a ‘mini-me’ PC music and was doomed to never stand up to the test.

The wave of the current App boom has lots of force left in it yet.  But when it finally does subside, the marketplace is going to be left realizing that Apps are the tool not the endgame.  The next stage of mobile music will be putting into practice what the app revolution has taught us about what mobile should be, what role it should play and where it should sit.

Value chain conflicts

Perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of launching a mobile music service is the conflict across the value chain.  In highly simplistic terms there are three key constituencies in the consumer mobile value chain: the handset makers, the carriers and the retailers.  Of course sometimes one entity can play two or even all three roles.  Each wants to own as much of the customer  relationship as they possibly can.  Throw music in the mix and suddenly each of those stakeholders is busy trying to leap frog the other (see figure 4).  This of course is what Nokia found themselves up against when trying to take Comes With Music to market: the carriers simply saw Nokia trying to circumvent their own heavily funded digital music services and yet Nokia was still asking them to subsidize those very same handsets…

The mobile music service value chain has become a complex place to navigate, with not only competition but also a diversity of business models each with their own unique twist on carving up the revenue pie (see figure five).

Value Chain Conflict Translates into Consumer Confusion

But value chain conflict doesn’t just impact business, it hits consumers as well, with an increasingly confusing mish mash of music brands on any given phone. And then of course there is the added complexity of ecosystems and operating systems.  Consumers are inadvertently being forced into make bets on their long term mobile future.  Once a consumer has opted into an app store ecosystem, paid to download apps over a 2 year contract, uploaded their music to a locker, saved their playlists etc it becomes very hard to move.  Not so much velvet handcuffs as clapped in iron chains.  Add to that the complexity of handset operators developing their own app and music service ecosystems within each of the OS siloes (see figure 6) and an increasingly complex picture emerges.  All of which skews the field to music services which are not tied to any single operating system fiefdom.  Perhaps the biggest winner out of all of this mobile music fragmentation will be Facebook?  Currently quietly collecting the world’s most comprehensive set of music service user data, come the end of the year Facebook will be uniquely well positioned to act as cross-service, cross-OS conduit.  Spotify might be making a play for being the operating system for music (I say the API for music, though that’s probably semantics) but Facebook could become operating system for music *services*.

The Future’s Bright, Probably

There is no doubt that mobile brings a huge amount to the digital music equation, making music discovery, acquisition and consumption more immediate and fun than it has ever been.  With the help of the likes of TopSpin and Mobile Roadie it has become the ideal conduit for deepening direct to fan relationships.  And though mobile will play a key part in cloud focused music services it is the app developer community which has transformed mobile most. While paid mobile music services remain mired in internecine value chain conflict, Apps have transformed mobile as a music channel from an awkward, underperforming curiosity into something vibrant and truly differentiated.

Tablets add important context.  They turn the conversation from mobile music strategy to connected device music strategy.  (They  also do a better job at most music experiences than phones).  In fact talking about mobile as a separate channel is no longer that instructive, rather we should think about mobile as one consumer touch point in an integrated channel and platform strategy.

But, once again, it is crucial to consider that Apps are the enabler, not the objective.  Remember, ringtones were the future once too.  The challenge for developers is to navigate through the wild west gold rush, and establish long term learnings from the App boom experience.  Think of the App economy as one big market research project (that’s certainly how Apple views it).  When the wave subsides the mobile music landscape will have changed forever.  Artists, labels, managers, developers, carriers, handset makers all need to work together to ensure that that future is as positive a force for the music industry as the early signs suggest it could be. The depressing alternative is that we look back in 5 years at the App era as another ringtone bubble.

How Blackberry’s and Playstation’s Problems Will Shape Paid Content Strategies

Research In Motion, the company behind Blackberry, are watching the dust settle on one of the biggest challenges the company has faced.  The prolonged email and BBM service outage may prove to have even more dramatic impacts on their long term prospects, with confidence fatally shattered for many consumers.  Sony will have been grateful for so much of the spotlight to be shone on RIM’s troubles as they found themselves victim once again to a security breach.

Security breaches, Denial of Service attacks, service outages and other such disruptions may have diverse causes but they have two crucial things in common:

• They disrupt the consumer experience, simultaneously  damaging consumer confidence
• They could often have been prevented with more effective preventative measures by the companies affected

All of this may seem distant from paid content strategies, but the impacts will soon be keenly felt, particularly at the costing phase.  When services are proposed, whether by a start-up or by a division of a large corporation, budgets and costs are never as big as people wished they were.  That is just the nature of doing business and technology builds.   Business casing, revenue modelling, cost forecasting are always balancing acts and security is rarely one of the first technology investments on people’s minds when building content services.

Security for content services has traditionally played a role similar to motor insurance when buying a car: you know you are going to need to take it out, and you know that its cost will be impacted by the car you buy, but the majority of your time and energies are spent researching the car.  Insurance is the afterthought.  Though of course you still have to pay the full amount else you cannot legally drive the car.  And here is where the analogy splits: with content service builds, if you find that you have allocated more than you expected to user features or content licenses you can make up the shortfall by reducing the costs on less visible components such as security.

This is all great for consumer product experiences: we get more features, more content, more supported devices etc. But those days are now numbered.  The ROI of great product experiences disappears if you lose customers because of service disruptions.  Just ask Sony and RIM.

RIM and Sony are the pivot points

Of course many other companies than Sony and RIM have been getting hammered by DOS attacks, security breaches and outages (Soundcloud was a recent victim).  But they are the landmark events.  They are the global scale events which will become industry reference points around which future strategies will pivot.

Now CTO’s and security experts will be given a much bigger voice in the earliest stages of planning content services.  If you are a start-up expect VCs to start wanting to see security expertise on your team and robust contingency plans in your business case. If you are building a service within a larger organization expect the CTO to start calling many of the shots.

Whatever your situation, expect to start having to allocate much more of your budget on security, and because content owners are unlikely to slash their license fees to help companies pay for security investments, user functionality will be hit hardest.  The end result for consumers will be safer, but less exciting content products.  Not the most enthralling of prospects…