Month: July

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Rhapsody and Napster are hoping their mobile phone-compatible services will change their fortunes in the music subscription business, but that has yet to be seen. The downloading of music has dwarfed the subscription service recently. Napster's partnership with AT&T since late 2006 has seen little change in the company's subscriber base and the service is only available with other-the-air downloads on one phone model, while the side-loading service is available on just a few others. Napster is also one of several music services available for AT&T phones. This is where Rhapsody and Verizon have the upper hand. Rhapsody is the default music service for Verizon phones and is compatible with ten kinds of phones. Verizon can also add the cost of the subscription to their phone bill, something AT&T has not been able to do. Verizon is far ahead of its rivals and is working to transform Rhapsody's business. The problem is that the music subscription business has always had more potential than success. Rhapsody is great for sophisticated music lovers, but hasn't had mass-marketing appeal yet.

Month: May

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Apple appears to be set to upgrade their iPhone to a 3rd generation. The product is easily the phone with the biggest impact on mobile music on the market to date. While only 6.7% of mobile phone users listen to music on their phone, 74.1% of iPhone customers use their iPhone as an MP3 player. Most of these consumers transfer their songs via computer connection. The new iPhone supposedly may be able to use cellular networks to download music, rather than current iPhones that use a slower, older network for downloading tracks. This would give faster downloading and a much larger coverage to customers, and probably increase music downloading more significantly. While Apple continues to run with its successful product, other phone companies try to keep up. Smart phone company Research in Motion (RIM), who makes Blackberry, owns the largest share of the smart phone market, but Apple is closing in. In an effort to fight off Apple, the two latest Blackberrys, the Pearl and the Curve, are aimed at the high-end music market. They each have available applications such as MediaGuide (service that identifies songs on the radio), streaming XM radio, and a pending full-track downloading service from PureTracks. Verizon is also trying to make music more widely available for all of its phones. Teaming up with Rhapsody and its newly acquired Urge music service from MTV, Verizon is the mobile platform for these music services. Since smart phones only cover a small part of the market, Verizon hopes to capitalize on the rest of the consumers with these new music phones.

Month: November

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Verizon is teaming with RBD for a sponsorship that include the Mexican pop group's 2008 tour. Verizon will help promote the album in there stores as well as out in hopes to draw more customers, particularly Latin customers.