Most interesting of course in the article is the quote from Michael Bornhaeusser, CEO of SDC. He, among many, including myself, was not happy with Omnifone’s controversial winning of the Meffy Award and he says:

“Having the best music service award dedicated to Omnifone is a scandal in my opinion. It is not fair to give an award to a service that hadn’t been launched and has never sold a single track. The jury has disqualified themselves with a decision to give the award to a slide show presentation when service providers like 3UK/Groove – selling 2 million tracks a month – are not taken into account.”

And I would have to agree. I’d love to understand the judging panel’s criteria and rationale. Maybe they know more than meets the eye. In which case, it’s time to spill!

Since the Meffy’s, Omnifone has announced a launch with Telenor in Sweden and claims to have 30 more ‘deals’ in place. What stage those deals are at is anyone’s guess.

Anyone in Sweden tried the service on Telenor yet? Any good?

Oh, just spied this as well http://www.smstextnews.com/2007/06/omnifone_version_1_-_the_myfone_presentation.html
Most interesting.

I got the whole sales pitch from their sales guy 2 years ago and was underwhelmed then. I’m still somewhat underwhelmed until I see the product actually working. The glitzy stuff on the website looks great, but I need to see a real live working version in my hand to really *get* it.

But 2 years have passed since then. They obviously had deep enough pockets to keep going and hopefully, by now, they have a product that actually works and is ready for market. They clearly went live way to early in the previous iteration.

I wonder if they have a customer communication plan to support the product actually working though? There’s nothing in the management team’s one-way media background to suggest that they do but I’ll be *very* happy to be proved wrong on that point as I don’t want to see it fail. But if they’re relying on the network operators to do the communication and relationship stuff, then we know they don’t know much about that stuff either as their focus is on customer retention and acquisition generally, rather being service specific. And because this is on a phone, and being led by corporates (big music labels and MNOs) and not a funky start-up, I don’t think they have that credibility that means you get the tell a friend vibe that we’ve seen for the likes of last.fm, flickr, facebook et al.

One thing they’ve been extraordinarily good at though is PR. To have won an award at The Meffy’s without having a live, working product with proven customer usage behind is both controversial and astonishing. Fair play to them. They’re doing *something* right. Is it just the PR though

I doubt MusicStation will be the saviour of the music industry, but maybe it will be one of the many things that will keep music alive for the masses and keep revenues trickling through to the labels. I don’t think anything will save the labels as they stand. They need to change and adapt to the new always-on, always-connected world and it’s hard for any large entity to move at any speed and change habits of generations.

What happens when Pandora and Last.FM go properly mobile and we’re all on flat rate mobile data plans and have mobile broadband? Ok, maybe that’s a vision for the medium or long-term future, but it’s gonna happen right? Will Musicstation still matter? And will the yoof ov 2day be interested in something that’s come from Mr corporate network operator (can you think of a feminine network operator?) or will they (the yoof) prefer to sideload all that content their mate copied for them on to their hard-drive? And they’re the ones who will make or break this service. And they’re also the ones who don’t have the cash to splash and are on pre-pay phones (avg £2 credit) – yes, I’m generalising here, but it’s not an unrealistic picture for the yoof market in Britain. Or is this a service for the 35 year old male who’s gadget hungry and enjoys a good gig or festival too? And is it him who’ll drive this stuff?

I don’t know the answer/s, and I suspect there isn’t one single one. But all these issues were raised at the recent Knock Knock conference in Denmark talking about the future of music and also at a Music Tank panel session I did a month or two back. Links to the full webcast of the Knock Knock conference on my blog http://technokitten.blogspot.com/2007/06/knock-knock-future-of-music-was-awesome.html

Really interested to see how this one pans out.