Universal Music Group

Orange: Using free music downloads to attract youth market

Paul Rasmussen — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 12:39:25 -0400

Orange and Universal music have launched a music streaming service that aims to attract subscribers and reduce piracy. The new ‘Monkey' service is targeted at 16-24-year-olds who don't own 3G handsets or have mobile Internet packages but it will provide users who top up €1.16 each month with 600 minutes of music streaming.

According to Pippa Dunn, director of pay-as-you-go at Orange, the company is funding the service as an acquisition tool, similar to its successful two-for-one cinema offer ‘Orange Wednesdays', which it hopes will result in increased top-ups and long-term loyalty. "It's a great opportunity to acquire an audience that will increase their average spend and represent the future of our pay-monthly business too."

Universal Music said it considered Monkey a valuable weapon in the war on piracy as it looks to meet Digital Britain's target of reducing piracy levels by 70 per cent within the next two years. Rob Wells, VP of digital for Universal Music International, said, "It's essentially a piracy play. A large proportion of the demographic this is aimed at aren't spending a great deal on legitimate music."

Commenting on the launch, Ovum said that Monkey was well positioned on basic low cost phones at a time when Spotify was still waiting to sign with Apple's and Google's high-end smartphones that target a slightly older, wealthier consumer.

However, the research firm added that the immediate problems for Orange following this announcement will be to persuade the other three major music labels to join Universal on Monkey, as well as persuading online Spotify users to sign up or stay with Orange instead of saving up for a Spotify-compatible phone.

For more on this story:
NMA and Mobile Choice

Music service looks set to cost Nokia

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 06:59:55 -0400

Nokia looks like it is heading for more trouble following the news that its 'Comes With Music' service seems set to severely damage its handset profit margins. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Nokia will be paying the world's biggest label, Universal Music Group, US$35 per handset to bundle access to the label's catalogue. The deal, which has met with astonishment by music industry veterans, is around seven times what some privately estimated the deal was worth. While this news was probably not relevant to Nokia's financial announcement--which knocked 13 per cent off its share price, this 'Comes With Music' deal with Universal does not look good for the future fortunes of Nokia.

For more on this story:
- read The Register and Arstechnica

Related stories:
Nokia: Comes With Music deals close. Nokia story
EMI in talks to join Nokia's Comes With Music. EMI Story

Nokia share price slumps on poor infrastructure margins

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 06:59:58 -0500

While announcing a series of new products and services at its Capital Markets jamboree, Nokia sneaked out a warning that its telecoms equipment business--Nokia Siemens Networks--would not generate a double digit operating margin until the end of 2009.

The company's shares lost four percent on this news and it underlines again the difficulties many of the long-established infrastructure developers are encountering, not helped by the entry of Asian manufacturers keen to grab market share at almost any price. Last year Nokia said that NSN would have a 10 percent plus operating margin by the first quarter of 2008, a number that will now obviously not be achieved.

Regardless of NSN's poor performance--which will rejuvenate rumours of its sale, Nokia unveiled plans to attack the heartland of the iPhone by having its own touchscreen phone ready by next year, together with a 'free' music download service in partnership with Universal Music.

The deal with Universal will enable consumers--starting from the second half of 2008, to download music under the offer--to be called "Comes with Music," to receive free material from Universal's entire back catalogue for 12 months and to be able to keep all the music.

However, Nokia would not confirm whether a one-off fee would be payable to offset the cost of acquiring the rights to Universal's music, which will be protected by DRM software, and will not be playable on any other device.

Sony Ericsson joins the music bandwagon

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 03:59:00 -0500

In an effort to stay within hearing distance of the many other mobile music announcements, Sony Ericsson has revamped its Playnow music store to allow subscribers access to a greatly expanded range of content, discoverable through features such as TrackID, which allows users to search for songs using snippets of lyrics.

Sony Ericsson said that it plans to have a new mobile music service up and running by the second quarter of next year. This would be a big step from the phone manufacturer's current platform, which only gives users access to downloads of Sony BMG music.

Sony says it has already received support from EMI Group, Universal Music and Warner Music. "The situation today is that we have offers on the table of five million music tracks, as a first step, from all the majors, as well as local and independent labels," said Sony Ericsson head of content acquisition, Martin Blomkvist.

Consumers will be able to access the Playnow service from their mobile phone and their PC, enabling over the air downloads to the phone or side loading of content from PC to mobile. The majority of the music catalogue will be offered in DRM-free format, the company said.

For more about this story:
- read these articles from TomsHardware.co.uk and Telecoms.com

SPOTLIGHT: Vodafone offers unlimited downloads

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 07:59:52 -0400

Vodafone UK is offering customers unlimited access to over a million tracks from all the major record labels, as well as leading independents, on a range of new handsets for Christmas. Through an exclusive agreement with Omnifone, Vodafone will roll out their MusicStation service, giving customers the ability to download tracks from Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, EMI Music and Warner Music Group direct to their handsets.