I am the music man, i come from far away...

Record labels are predicting that this month's launch of three new mobile phone music services will usher a return of rising sales after years of decline.
Apple's iPhone grabbed the headlines with its arrival in Britain last week. But music executives are just as excited about the new unlimited downloads service launched on Vodafone. At the same time Nokia, the world's largest maker of mobile phones, has opened a digital music store here.
The world's biggest music company, Universal, is backing the Vodaphone’s MusicStation. Rob Wells, head of digital at Universal's international division, predicts the £1.99-a-week subscription service will have mass market appeal, predicting digital music sales here could offset falling CD sales within a year.
Global sales have been falling since 2000, down another 5% to $19.6bn (£9.4bn) last year, according to industry group IFPI. Although digital sales are rising fast, at a tenth of the total market, they have yet to make up for tumbling CD sales.
One place where the gap has been closed is Japan. Total music sales there edged up 1% last year. Japan's success in offsetting falling CD sales is largely attributed to the prevalence of mobile downloads.
There are already indications that mobile music sales are picking up in the UK. Orange UK network says its music sales jumped 70% over the past six months and expects them to double by the end of 2007.
UK industry association BPI also cites support from new business models such as subscription schemes and enhanced handsets - four out of 10 UK mobiles can now play music.
Philip Makinson at telecoms specialists Greenwich Consulting says at £1.99 a week MusicStation brings big changes for music buyers but not necessarily for music sellers.
"Can something like this save the music industry? Well, MusicStation per se in the short term no. Because firstly it's only on Vodafone at the moment and secondly it's very cheap, meaning that the actual revenue for the music industry per user can only be quite small."
"There is a potential market there but I think it does get overestimated ," says Jonathan Arber, analyst at telecoms experts Ovum. He remains cautious about the benefits for record labels.

and onto the questions...
1) Which big music company is backing Vodaphone’s MusicStation?
2) On average, how many UK mobiles can now play music?
3) What indications are there that mobile music sales are picking up in the UK?
4) Why might the music industry not necessarily benefit from this cheap and easy service?

SAVE THE WHALE
x sylvia

nmt

ok, seriously now...



NMT stands for New Media Technology. confused? dont be. it iss pretty much what it says on the tin - technology, to do with media, which is new. examples include theings like mobile phones (the new sony ericson X9thousand million or whatever) mp3 players and ipods (mini, nano, micro and whatever else they come up with), digital/HD television, and many more.

New Media Technology gets old pretty fast, as new products are being constantly brought out. it is possible to map the technological advances of recent times by picking a certain type of technology and taking a look how it evolved, for example in music; we went from wax records to ipods in a few decades.



but let's not get sidetracked... because the particular area of NMT i will be looking at is Web2.0
but more on that next time. =]

peace

lol