Midem is coming in January. It’s the music industry’s premier connected event and it takes place in Cannes, France, every year. If you’re working on something mobile-music related (or “connected” music), then I strongly, strongly recommend you consider attending the event. You’ll meet almost 7,000 other folk.

Don’t just buy a ticket though. Get in touch with the organisers and find out how you might be able to get involved, whether it’s participating in their hackathon or speaking on a panel. I know the team there so if you’d like an introduction, please let me know. Indeed, if you’d like to submit a paper, you can submit a paper for consideration — although I think it’s getting quite late now.

If you’re a startup, there’s a special €495 ticket price (or €295 for students and artists). Otherwise it’s €795 if you book in advance (or an extra €100 on the door).

Some key reasons for attending:

• Source music content
• Benchmark your technology and business model
• Showcase and sell your latest products, services and solutions
• Raise funds from an international community of investors
• Be visible among the global music ecosystem
• Develop deals & partnerships with artists & brands

Make the decision soon though as hotel rooms will get booked up.

I just looked the trip up on Expedia and I’m astonished to report that you can stay at the Intercontinental in Cannes (including return flights from London Luton on EasyJet) for just £635! Or consider the Mercure near the beach — that’s just £298 for the hotel and flights!

Charms & Pendants: charms,
Earrings: gold and silver earrings,
Rings: Diamond Rings,
Birthstones Jewelry: Birthstones by month.

If my schedule will allow it, I’ll definitely be popping along to see what’s moving from a mobile perspective — so I might see you there!

Waterloo, ON – Research In Motion (RIM) (NASDAQ: RIMM; TSX: RIM) today announced BBM™ Music, a new BBM (BlackBerry® Messenger) service for socially connected music fans.

BBM Music is an easy-to-use cloud-based service that enables social and viral music discovery by allowing users to build an evolving, community-based music library that is shared amongst their BBM Music friends. The size of the music library continues to grow as new friends join the community and each user can select music from a catalog with millions of songs from leading music companies – Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and EMI.

“More than 45 million customers already love the social communication benefits delivered through BBM and we are thrilled to be extending the experience into a uniquely social and interactive music service,” said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion. “We have partnered with leading music companies to provide a ‘full track’ music sharing and discovery experience that will provide users with quality music on demand and allow them to connect with friends on a whole new level.”

Key features of BBM Music include:

• Music made social – BBM Music is a cloud-based, social music service that allows you to share and discover music with your friends, creating a continually evolving music library:

• Build a personal music profile with 50 of your favorite songs. You can refresh your profile by swapping out up to 25 songs each month.
• Invite your BBM friends to subscribe to BBM Music and to join your BBM Music Community.
• With each friend that is added to BBM Music, you grow your music collection since the songs from the profile of each BBM Music friend are available to you at any time.
• Up to 50 tracks from your personal profile are shared with your BBM Music Community, and each member of your community shares up to 50 songs from their profile with you.
• Enjoy a truly social community-based music experience – the more friends who join your community, the more songs you can listen to.
• Easily discover music that your BBM Music friends are listening to, and comment on your friends’ songs and playlists.
• You can create multiple playlists from music in your profile as well as all of your friends’ profiles, and with one click you can shuffle the entire collection of music from your BBM Music Community. You can even see which friend contributed each song while it plays.
• Within your BBM Music app, you also see a visual timeline that shows the recent updates of all users within your community. It gives you a chronological view of community updates, including who added new friends, which songs were added or removed, which playlists were created and what comments were made by your BBM Music friends.
• Listen to Full Tracks – BBM Music subscribers can listen to full tracks from their friends’ profiles – not just previews.
• Offline Listening – Music can be saved to smartphones for offline listening, allowing users to access songs even when they don’t have wireless coverage.
• Topping the Charts – Keep track of how many friends are listening to your tracks.

Omnifone, a premier cloud music service provider, is providing RIM with a back-end solution for the BBM Music service that provides content management, music hosting and reporting functions based on Omnifone’s award winning technology. As part of RIM’s proprietary service, Omnifone’s back-end solution helps facilitate the delivery of a full music catalog to BBM Music users and comprehensive compensation reporting for copyright holders.

“A major component of online music continues to be about community, and the ability to discover new artists and music through word of mouth,” stated Rob Wells, President of Global Digital Business for Universal Music Group. “BBM Music dynamically and elegantly integrates the excitement of this social music discovery process with a high quality music service, enabling tens of millions of BlackBerry users to experience new music and to share those experiences with their friends virtually anywhere and at anytime.”

“We are pleased to be partnering with Research In Motion on their BBM Music service. RIM and its large base of BlackBerry Messenger users represent an exciting platform for expanding the reach of commercial digital music around the world,” stated Thomas Hesse, President, Global Digital Business, U.S. Sales and Corporate Strategy, Sony Music Entertainment. “The combination of a premium music solution and instant messaging will enable viral music discovery and emphasize the social power of digital music. It also offers an effective way of serving younger consumers by integrating music into the fabric of an important hub of their digital activity.”

“A dynamic social music experience is a powerful way for our artists to connect with fans and also for fans to discover music by interacting with each other,” said Michael Nash, Executive Vice President, Digital Strategy & Business Development, Warner Music Group. “Addressing more than 45 million BlackBerry Messenger users with a service tailor-made for its mobile community, BBM Music has the opportunity to reach a broad and engaged audience.”

“We are very excited to work with Research In Motion to bring our artists’ music to BBM’s huge and very loyal user base,” said Mark Piibe, Executive Vice President of Global Business Development at EMI Music. “BBM Music’s unique social discovery experience offers fans a great new way to discover music, share their favorite tracks with their friends and build a stronger connection with the artists they love.”

“The widespread adoption of mobile devices provides the perfect foundation for consuming and sharing music. Brands that want to deliver a unique interactive experience must create services that are mobile, social, and contextual,” said Maribel Lopez Principal at Lopez Research and Constellation Research Group.

A closed beta trial of the BBM Music service is starting today in Canada, the United States and the UK. The BBM Music service is expected to be commercially available to customers later this year for a monthly subscription of $4.99 USD* in Australia, Canada, Columbia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, the United Kingdom and the United States.

For more information about BBM Music, and to sign up to be notified of its availability in your country, please visit www.blackberry.com/bbmmusic.

* Pricing may vary by country and will be announced upon availability in each country. Data charges may apply if music is downloaded over wireless networks in conjunction with limited data plans. Check with your network operator for the terms of your data plan.

If you’re working in mobile music, I strongly recommend taking a look at midem. Most people working in music know all about midem, however it’s not so well known in the mobile sphere.

modem — always written in lowercase — is the world’s largest and most influential music industry event. It takes place each year in Cannes and if you’re looking to connect with senior folk in the music industry, it’s the place to be.

I write this because I know the organisers, Reed Midem, very well. If you’d like a personal connection, please let me know and I’ll introduce you.

Perhaps you’d like to speak, get more details on exhibiting or find out about participating in some of their mini events? For example, I think the midem Innovation Factory could well be highly relevant for some readers.

Here’s their event announcement:

For its 46th edition, midem is undergoing a makeover orchestrated by the music industry market’s new director Bruno Crolot. “We’re keeping the fundamentals, but we’re aware of the need to widen our positioning to encompass a broader range,” he explains. To adapt to the natural evolution in the music market, a number of innovations will be implemented. “We want to reach a bigger ecosystem. midem, which next year will run from Saturday to Tuesday, will bring together technology companies, advertising agencies and brands around artists and traditional music industry players.”

Alongside this new positioning, the tariffs for accreditation have been simplified and revised down: “We are proposing some very attractive prices for artists and start-ups. We’re also offering a special price of €495 until 30 September,” said Bruno Crolot.

Among major innovations for 2012, midem will create a new space, the Direct2fan Camp, where independent artists and labels can meet and where the latest digital tools aimed at developing and enriching the direct relationship with audiences will be showcased. Participants can benefit from advice and training on techniques to optimise their online presence via new technological tools and social networks.

Henceforth, the MidemNet programme will now run concurrently over the four days of the market, with a special day dedicated to major keynotes on what will be known as Visionary Monday. midem 2012 will also see the launch of the Innovation Factory, a space for meeting and discovery where start-ups, major technology players, artists and labels will be able to share their needs, projects and expertise in the field of music.

At the heart of the Innovation Factory, the midemlab, the international competition open to innovative start-ups and developers of applications, which was a great success in 2011, will widen its scope to include companies from all sectors. Candidates should propose innovations and digital solutions aimed at helping executives, artists and brands reach and cement bonds with audiences whilst generating revenues.

For brands, the new-look midem is developing an even more sophisticated programme of content, conferences and workshops, in order to foster interaction with artists, publishers and labels. After the success of Sync Day last year, midem is expanding this event through the addition of a competition, which will bestow awards for the best use of music in a marketing campaign.

Another novelty will be the launch of the midem festival, open to industry executives and for the first time also to the general public. This will comprise three evenings of special concerts in a single dedicated venue, during which upcoming artists and international stars will share the line-up. The Fringe stage, launched last year, has been renamed midem off, and for the forthcoming edition will include musical programming in the heart of the market by day, and live performances in the bars of Cannes by night. “We want the event to be more fun, to put live music at the core of midem, and do all we can so that participants feel more involved than they have in the past,” summarises Bruno Crolot.

More from Rio:

All you need to do is Tweet your idea for a really cool mobile application for the event, to Conor from Orange — and if he likes your idea, you win. Simple as that.

Here is Conor’s announcement tweet:

Ok people, suggest ideas for a music festival mobile app, my favourite idea gets the tickets, go wild use #OrangeFestivalApp

Just make sure you put the hashtag, #OrangeFestivalApp, in your entry, so that Conor can track your entry.

I’m seeing some good ideas — the latest being some kind of FourSquare-style artist rating app. I also liked this one:

An app to submit peoples’ Glasto photo’s to the large screens between bands for a slideshow of the best.

Me? I’d like to see a cross between FourSquare, Now Playing (the brilliant movie times app) and iPadio.

Get stuck in if you’d like to win…

The free music streaming service could also be coming to 3 Mobile’s entire range of handsets.

3 is currently in talks with Spotify with the aim of bringing a mobile app to every one of its 4.4 million customers. According to New Media Age, possibilities include pre-loading the app on all new handsets, as well as making available as a download.

via Spotify app coming to 3 Mobile? | Electricpig.

Now this is interesting. Very interesting.

What now for Omnifone’s MusicStation? It looks like Spotify is well placed to completely nail them to the wall — as, from the demonstrations I’ve had of Spotify Mobile — it’s incredibly similar, yet a heckuvalot more compelling to the standard consumer.

3UK have a history of innovation in the operator sphere — they have to, they’re the ‘challenger’ brand. It was 3UK who first ‘officially’ brought us the likes of MSN, Yahoo, Skype, eBay via ‘X-Series’. They were the first mobile operator to introduce those well known dotcom logos into their store-front literature and signage and they did benefit quite substantially from it.

As far as Spotify is concerned, the up-sale value (you’re rumoured to have to have a premium account in order to use their mobile services), will be pretty welcome — and the fact that 3′s customer base is reasonably manageable (we’re not talking a 15-20m behemoth yet), the deal could be hugely useful for them.

But what for 3UK? I think they’d benefit from a lot of consumer attention. Would you swap to 3 to get Spotify Mobile? Potentially, I’m sure. It’s such a compelling offering. It’s going to really eat into 3′s existing music offerings (they were, if memory serves, one of the UK’s largest retailers or digital music).

Spotify on 3UK? Bring it ON.

And if you haven’t checked out Spotify, if you’ve been hearing all about it and not bothering looking, now is definitely the time. Download it, type in Michael Jackson and double-click to play a song. Think iTunes without the payment bollocks (and a whole lot more — once you start getting into sharing of playlists).

I’m going to do a larger piece next week — right now I want to get the MIR TV Rome and Prague videos finally edited and live for next week.

Tunebite internally “plays” the DRM’ed music at high speed and converts the digital output back into a non-DRM file.

It’s very unlikely that Nokia can do much about this, it’s like plugging the output of the sound card in your PC back into a recorder (though there’s an analogue conversion there). Tunebite does the same thing, but in the digital domain.

Paul saw the footage we shot at the Renoir launch and, suitably impressed with the device, took the plunge.

But there’s a glaring, glaring issue with the device.

Have a read:

Hi Ewan,

I am looking for some advice. I recently upgraded my handset to an LG KC910 after seeing the footage of it from the blogger party on your show. Overall I am extremely happy with it. However one annoyance with it is when browsing music that I loaded onto the supplied micro SDcard. When you select albums they are displayed (and play in alphabetical order) not the track order specified in the tags for the files. I can see no way of changing this. The manual doesn’t mention it. I had a quick search on the web and found a few other people reporting the same issue. I tried contacting LG Mobile Phone support. The operator I spoke to couldn’t give me an answer and has emailed the head office, but couldn’t give me a time scale for a response. I was wondering what I should do next. Do you have any contacts that could give you answer on this? I suspect that the software currently on the phone doesn’t allow albums to be played in the correct order. This seems like a big oversight on LG’s part. I hope that they intend to issue a software update and soon as this was one of the reasons I went of for this phone. You may want to mention this issue on the site so that others are aware of this. I dodn’t see it in any of the (many) reviews I read.

Keep up the good work.

Regards,
Paul Newton

Quite simply, the LG Renoir is a ‘Fisherprice’ music phone.

We were never sent a Renoir test handset so we weren’t able to test these kind of things.

On the face of it, Paul should shut right up. You’ve got music, right Paul? It does play music? What more could you want?

In reality, this is 100% ridiculous. It ONLY plays music in alphabetical order?

What chump programmed that?

Total rubbish.

Total unmitigated rubbish.

You’d think some bright spark, somewhere deep in the bowels of LG, would have thought that SOME people might like to play music in ALBUM order.

Anyway to answer your questions Paul, I do have LG contacts.

I’ve got two routes to LG. One is through the LG blog. Chris and the team there are very good — but there’s not much they can do, I suspect, in this situation. I suspect all they could do is pass your enquiry to LG in Korea.

Which brings me to my second route to LG — direct to Korea. You’ll need to give me a few days Paul, but I’ll put this issue to them and ask for a response.

If they respond with some kind of acknowledgement then that’ll be good. If they respond with a fix or a solution, even better.

Trouble is, these LG devices nowadays are literally pieces of plastic and metal. They can’t be easily upgraded, even though there’s software inside. Don’t expect a 2.2 style iPhone upgrade for the Renoir.

If you’ve got suggestions for Paul, please post them here.

The multi-year sponsorship of the Millenium Dome is rather nifty. Renamed ‘the O2′, you can get priority tickets to some rather huge gigs if you’re an O2 customer. Reasonably cool. But irrelevant if you live elsewhere around the UK.

Until today, that is.

O2 have done a deal with LiveNation/AMG. From the 1st of January next year, AMG’s venues are to be renamed. So what was once known as ‘The Brixton Academy’ will now be known as ‘the O2 Academy Brixton’.

O2 customers will gain priority access to tickets to all gigs at the venues, as well as other Live Nation events across the country. In total, O2 customers will gain special access to as many as 4,000 Live Nation produced shows a year in the UK up to 48 hours before they go on general sale.

That is set to be a persuasive pitch for those for whom live music is an absolute must. Me? I’m never that impressed standing at the back surrounded by drunk Coldplay fans. But if you’re one of those Coldplay fans desperate to get a ticket before everyone else does, would you change your network operator to o2? Quite possibly.

Here are the new O2 Academy venues:

O2 Academy Brixton
02 Academy Islington
O2 Academy Birmingham
O2 Academy Bristol
O2 Academy Glasgow
O2 Academy Liverpool
O2 Academy Newcastle
O2 Academy Oxford
O2 Academy Sheffield
O2 Academy Leeds
O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire

This is what swings it for me though: Fast track entry. I’d use my O2 iPhone account for that. Definitely.

This is also quite an interesting point:

O2 will work closely with Live Nation/AMG to enhance the concert going experience, developing technologies like mobile ticketing which is both convenient and environmentally friendly, and utilize the venues to assess the benefits of contact-less NFC (Near Field Communication) technology in the music industry.

Interesting, interesting…

This note is from Tom Adler of Didiom, a very interesting new service that’s all about ‘placeshifting’ your music to any device.

Let’s get the overview from Tom.

- – - – -

Hi Ewan,

I am writing to invite you to test out a new mobile service that we’ve just launched called Didiom.

Didiom allows you to placeshift your music collection – streaming music files from your PC to your mobile phone wherever you are, which means now you can have your entire collection “to-go”, no matter how large it is.

Didiom also has a unique marketplace that lets you buy music wirelessly from our catalog of over 1.5 million tracks. Plus there’s a “name-your-own-price” button that lets you bid on music to get it at the price you want to pay.

All the facts have been incorporated into a factsheet that’s online, with flickr photos and embeddable video;

[ Here's the video ]

http://www.didiom.com/smpr/

We’re trying to get as many people as we can to try out the free application, so anything you can do to help get the word out to your readers would be very appreciated.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks for your time.

Tom

- – - – -

Now, the bad news for most readers: This is US-only for the time being. That is an arse.

But let’s have a peek in the door at what handsets it works on:

That’s a good range — obviously Windows Mobile is the main platform for Didiom at the moment, but I’m very encouraged to see the Blackberry Curve on the list.

I can see myself really liking Didiom. I’ve bought a lot of iTunes music and, frankly, I think that’s somebody else’s problem. I don’t see why I should be penalised for doing business with Apple when a new moblie music service or device comes along. So good news, Didiom.

If you’re in the States, give it a go?

Thanks for writing, Tom!

A Google for Comes With Music should work, also.

As always, we heard about it all after the event. Goodness knows what they’re up to at Nokia Towers. We would have brought you an entire TV show dedicated to Comes With Music had we known about it all.

But don’t fear! Don’t fret!

Oh no. Here’s the email that arrived this afternoon from Nokia:

Dear Ewan,

Please see the link below to view the multimedia news release that contains B-roll material and sound bites in broadcast quality from the NOKIA REMIX event that took place in London yesterday.

http://tinyurl.com/4mpe9f

For viewing the on demand web cast, visit http://events.nokia.com.

Should you have any questions or comments, please send feedback to Danielle Ross.

So if you’d like to watch some B-Roll of the event — that’s your link up there.

We will, whenever we can be bothered, bring you some Nokia related content.

Although, actually, I don’t think we will, come to think of it. What is the point?

Comes With Music. It’s ok. It’s certainly not brilliant. It doesn’t match the iTunes experience one jot. Is it mass market? Yeah. Your normob will soldier on and wrap their head around the rather involved UI. Your average 16 year old will put up with it. Just like they do with their current Nokias. And it’ll work. And it’ll position Nokia nicely with music.

Next.

So, if you’re up for a bit of B-Roll — that’s the link up there.

Otherwise, well.. I’ve a note from Carphone Warehouse telling me the Nokia Comes With Music handset will be retailing for just under 130 quid shortly. I’m not be disposed to Carphone Warehouse either after experiencing their not-Lifeline Insurance service. But I was thinking of going and buying a handset so I can check out Comes With Music.

It’s the right thing to do.

I just don’t feel up for shedding out the cash to both Nokia and Carphone Warehouse today.

The Nokia Music Store currently boats a wide catalogue of over 4 million songs, with tracks from record labels and indie artists alike. The spanish version of the store promises tracks from artists like La Oreja de Van Gogh, Pereza, Melendi, Amaral, Deluxe, Krakovia, Coti, Ismael Serrano, Extromoduro and Miguel Bosé and Nokia has already reached agreements with various local record labels to promote the local talent too.

Speaking about the launch, Manuel Reverte, Head of Services and Software at Nokia Spain, says:

With the launch of the Nokia Music Store, Nokia aims to make available to all Spanish users of all ages the music that they want at any moment they want, with all the facilities that mobility permits nowadays,

“Comes with Music” — that’s the new offensive from Nokia and it’s got a lot — a LOT — of people quaking with concern.

When a company such as Nokia — routinely knocking out millions of handsets in a given day — decides to give away unlimited music with a handset, you need to start panicking if you’ve got anything whatsoever to do with this field.

How does it work?

Well, it does-what-it-says-on-the-tin. Buy the phone and you get access to an unlimited amount of music.

Ok. Not unlimited. Think iTunes. Think MusicStation. A *good* amount of tracks. You’ll find stuff that you like, at least.

It’s the Nokia 5300 series handsets that are to get this first. Specifically, the 5310 XpressMusic. Fair enough. No bother. I’m an iTunes man myself. Start knocking out Nokia N-Series handsets with this and I’ll certainly reconsider this position.

There’s certainly a lot of questions to answer.

Carphone Warehouse are the exclusive UK pre-pay channel for the device. If you want ‘Comes-with-Music’, you need to get it from them, this Christmas. You can, if you’re extra-specially interested, get yourself on the pre-order list at CarphoneWarehouse.com.

We should get a look at the device and answer a heckuvalot of questions this evening at the Carphone Warehouse Christmas Preview.

‘Til then, I leave you with some excited bullish statements from some of the key players:

Tero Ojanpera, executive vice president and head of the Nokia Entertainment and Communities business, said: “We believe that Comes With Music will transform the way people enjoy music. With unlimited music access for a year, you can enjoy your favorite artists or delve into new genres without having to worry about individual track or album purchases.”

Simon Ainslie, Nokia UK Managing Director, said: “Comes With Music is the most compelling digital music offer ever introduced to the UK. You get a fantastic Nokia device with unlimited access for a year to a huge catalog of music. We’re thrilled to be working with Carphone Warehouse to bring Comes With Music to the UK.”

Andrew Harrison, UK CEO, The Carphone Warehouse, said: “We expect the Nokia 5310 Comes With Music to be the gift for Christmas and at the top of all shopping lists. We know how much our customers love music and we hope to make music millionaires of people everywhere.”

For a little while, expect a negative reaction when you try and buy one of these from Vodafone or any other operator with its own music sales channels.

I was wrong.

MusicStation is quite simply, pretty amazing. What I thought really couldn’t work, or ever be good (especially on a mobile device for so cheap), actually is.

The library available is massive; and originally I was expecting to find that some of the more obscure music I like to listen to wouldn’t actually be available; but it all is.  I searched for a bunch of oldies I love, and even the newer music which isn’t widely known. All there isn’t a genre which isn’t covered, which meant I was happily able to enjoy some Mozart, Candi Staton and even a little Slipknot for when the desire arose.

The one big flaw I was expecting was poor sound quality. There is nothing worse than listening to music being streamed at a mere 96kps, and I have made it a rule that all such music must never reach my ears. So I was pleasantly surprised when I heard the quality of the tracks.

Definitely not 96kps.

When played through speakers, admittedly there is a slight lossiness to the quality, and there isn’t as much actually punch in the tracks than say if you had them in a hard copy. But for general listening, and with a good pair of headphones, it shouldn’t be that much of a concern.

The application as a whole is fast, and simple to use. It has simple menus to navigate, and you can even use the rest of your mobile with MusicStation still running.

Quite possibly one of the best things about MusicStation, is the download speeds. I’ve been using a non-3G connection (due to the lack of 3G coverage), and each song on average has taken around 90 seconds. This does depend entirely on the length of the song, but even so it’s still fairly quick.

Some of the downsides to MusicStation have to be the fact you don’t actually have the songs stored on your phone; which means you can’t move them around. This though, is a copyright protective aid more than anything else I think.

Then there is the battery life!
You have to expect that being connected to the internet full time, you will be drowning a few of the mobile’s resources, but in general it’s not practical. I was using it during a certain meeting I had last Wednesday, and after two hours there was barely any life left at all. You certainly cannot expect more than a couple of hours out of a fully charged mobile with MusicStation – but at least you’ll be enjoying some brilliant music though!

The music library isn’t yet fully equipped to my standards, and there are certainly more tracks, albums and artists that should be listed too. For example, Frankie Knuckle’s brilliant song “Your Love”, not there! I admit I was a little disappointed. There were a few others too which I was sad to see, were not available; hopefully more will be added though.

In all though, I’m immensely surprised, MusicStation is nothing other than brilliant. It has a few flaws, which everything has, but I’m sure eventually battery issues will be a thing for the past.

There is though, one final issue with this…
It’s only available for Vodafone customers.

Vodafone, from what I’ve seen of it, is mainly an operator who attracts business customers or adults in general. I don’t know of a single friend who is on Vodafone; and of all the friends that I have told about MusicStation, not a single one has said “oh, that sounds crap” or “I wouldn’t pay that much”. So why then, is a music service, which would have huge custom with the teenagers of today, not, broadening itself to other operators?

I hope that this is changed soon, because I would probably pay for it.

Vodafone’s music service will have single track downloads at 99p a go, albums for £7.99, has a try before you buy option and is available on 11 handsets. O2 is pitching its offering as ‘artist led’ with the usual load of videos and bumf, with single track downloads also at 99p.

I’ve lost count of the number of music services that operators – and occasionally handset makers – have attempted to foist on their users with limited success. There’s a number of reasons why such services haven’t taken off, not least the fact that Apple bestrides digital music like a colossus, but mainly it seems because the handset operators’ business model seems to be ‘let’s try and do a mobile version of iTunes, but let’s make it not as good’. The prices are higher, the services are limited to a handful of handsets and there’s no features we haven’t seen a million time before.

But then again, I suspect these music efforts are more a nod to keeping the shareholders happy ‘we’re doing music too! Look, just like Apple!’ rather than a real stab at making a must-have service. Back to the drawing board.

I however, may have found a solution. It’s called the UFO, and it’s made by Miidio. As the name suggests, it looks like a UFO, but no where in size comparison. It’s smaller than the palm of my very small hand. Although, the weight of it is a lot more than you would expect; but then again, I’m always worried when speaker devices are extremely light.

It’s extremely cool, and for a music lover, I’m quite impressed. Okay, not exactly surround sound, and it doesn’t like some music, but I’ll save that for later. It’s perfect for small rooms, kitchens, and depending on who’s, a bedroom.

The design does make its look modern, but it isn’t ambiguous. It sits, does it thing (remarkably well for such a small device), and doesn’t make itself over-powering to the design of your room. However, I’ve found that for a device that’s meant to look cool, and Miidio have tried with this, it doesn’t stand out enough.

In my bedroom (which is a bit of mess), it didn’t really make its mark, and it blended in with rubbish that surrounds it. And for seventy pounds, I don’t think it should blend in with my clutter; I want it to be seen, and I want it to have an aura about it. Sadly it doesn’t.

The sound quality for the music lover is also not that riveting either. I agree that it’s brilliant for what it is, and I’ve heard far worse out of 2.0 stereo speakers, but it isn’t up to scratch. The bass is for the most part non-existent, and the treble is far too tinny. The middle sounds don’t have much power behind them, and the volume only distorts everything you hear.

I would also warn against listening to any Classical, dance, bassy, or heavy metal. It’s perfect for regular pop and general listening, as long as you’re not caught up about the up-most sound quality.

As for the placement of the device, let’s just hope you’re not one that doesn’t like to be told what to do. The UFO requires a good surface to work on, whether you like it or not. Unlike normal speakers, the UFO works off a vibrating base, which turns the surface it’s placed on as the speaker. I’ve tried it on a few, and I have to say, I don’t like the limitations. I’m currently listening to it on my computer desk, which is a tad cluttered, and it sounds terrible. On my kitchen floor, pretty amazing; on my drawers in my room, relatively okay. Carpet, solid wood, or even semi-hollow wood is a no go. I’ve found it works best on glass, but then again, not everyone has a glass surface to utilise for music listening in the room of their choice.

Due to the fact the UFO requires a platform to work, it isn’t portable; therefore totally useless for campers, festival goers, and I couldn’t test it for a sleepover either.

You can use with Miidio with a mains-supply plug, or through battery power. In all it requires eight “AA” batteries, but it also comes with a battery holder pack too.

I have a slight issue with the power cable, as it has released itself relatively easily, and it’s annoying.

Overall, despite some of its downfalls, I do like the UFO. It has a lot of possible potential, and I can see it being ideal for someone who maybe isn’t as picky as I about their quality of music. If you have it in the right place, it will work wonders too; and I believe its ideal for Kitchens, and probably a nice bathroom too. Sadly, it doesn’t combat the problem of mobile speakers out and about; but for your mobile, or MP3 device around the home, or say, a Hotel room, it’s brilliant. – 6/10

Check out Twisted Carbon to buy or read more. And my Flickr for some more pictures I’ve taken.

The paper says Apple’s hoping to expand its inventory of ringtones and ‘answer tones’ tones – the music the caller hears instead of the phone ringing while waiting for the person they’re caling to pick up – and, more interestingly, whether iPhone owners will be able to buy iTunes tracks over the mobile network, rather than sideloading them from a PC.

In return, the Times says, the record labels are asking for Apple to allow them to set variable pricing or introduce a subscription model, rather than sticking to the traditional 99 cents per song pricing scheme.

The fact that Apple is only now talking about ringtones and downloading music over mobile networks shows how much of a mistake launching with a 2G model may have been for the company – the original 2G model could prove to be the undoing of Apple’s fixed price model, which it’s stuck to since it launched iTunes way back when. The alternative, of course, is that Apple sticks to its guns and tells the labels to go jump – and risk losing out on all that lovely data revenue.

Of mobile users who watched video on their mobile, the split was fairly even between using websites like YouTube, their own carrier’s video offering and sideloading the content themselves. With music sideloading was the most popular option, with 48 percent of mobile-music listening respondents ripping content from a CD or other music source, while over one third of music-listening respondents purchased music through their operator. Pre-loaded content meanwhile, put in a strong showing, with around 60 percent of mobile gamers only playing the games that came with the phone.

So it’s not all bad news for operators – sure, they’ve missed the boat on some areas, but others are still firmly in their grip. Add to that there’s still a lot of money to be made off data delivery, not to mention ad-supported content, and it’s not such a grey picture after all.

As the FT points out, Apple wouldn’t be the first company to bundle in a music subscription with device purchases – Nokia unveiled its ‘comes with music scheme’ late last year, whereby some Nokia phones come bundled with a year of unlimited access to the company’s music store.

While it seems that Apple is only at the negotiating stage on its own plan to bundle music with the iPhone, if it goes ahead with the scheme, it’ll make a major departure for the company. Nevertheless, the promise of all you can eat music is an attractive one, so now Apple just has to find a price that consumers — not to mention the record labels — are happy to work with.

As well as new music capabilities, Groove Mobile also has some tasty customers: 12 global mobile operator customers including Sprint, 3 UK and Bell Mobility, not to mention relationships with major music labels including EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group. According to LiveWire, the addition of Groove means it now has 42 operators on board. Mobile music is among the most mature mobile services, so it sounds like LiveWire has made a sound move in adding tunes to its portfolio.

Once an O2 user buys a song from company’s Active portal, it gets sent both to their mobile and to their nominated email address. During an initial promotional period, Napster tracks will be sold for 99p or 5 tracks for £4.

What’s not immediately clear from O2 is whether the price of the song includes the data costs of delivering the tune to a user’s mobile. Hopefully, it’s just a one off fee – there’s nothing worse than paying twice for the same bit of content.

Kyte’s business model is all about distributing mobile and online video to destinations including phones, social networks and blogs for viral marketing campaigns. It’s currently being used by music industry figures like 50 Cent to distribute video to fans, who can then interact with the content by way of Kyte Player on their PC or, if they’re on a mobile, through the iPhone-optimised Kyte Mobile Web.

If Kyte’s backers are anything to go by – Telefónica, Nokia Growth Partners, DoCoMo Capital and Swisscom to name a few – the company’s video broadcasting will go down well with the operators.