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During the CTIA convention, we at Going Cellular paid particular attention to a seminar on mobile music. We can easily see music thriving in a mobile environment — just imagine being able to download that song you just heard right to your phone. Yet, there are some serious issues holding back this development. One such aspect is digital rights management, or DRM. This morning, we find out that Verizon is teaming with Rhapsody for DRM-free music downloads.

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There has been little trouble getting people to adopt mobile music players in the U.S. Apple alone has sold over 110 million iPods to date (though many of them aren’t still in use), and they have four different models of the device in production: the Shuffle, Nano, Video, and Touch. They’ve also sold over 3 billion songs through iTunes, and have become the biggest music retailer in the U.S. However, this success has not translated to mobile phones. While many phones created today are music-friendly — at worst having a built-in media player and at best being manufactured specifically as a music phone — the adoption of mobile phone music has been slow. In fact, only 5.7 percent of mobile phone users reported listening to music on their phones, according to a November 2007 survey. So with this seemingly perfect medium to distribute and listen to music, why has the industry failed thus far?
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Gold album. Platinum album. Double-platinum album. Mobile album. Yeah, that last one doesn’t seem to fit in really well. But it might just be the direction we’re headed — or one of them. Verizon Wireless has announced a deal with producer Timbaland to create the world’s first “mobile album.” Of course, there could be an older mobile album that none of us know about — but I know that if there is, someone will email me with it and call me an idiot. Anyway, it will be available exclusively through V Cast, and will be dropping throughout 2008.
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Yes, record sales are down, which is leading the Record Industry Association of America to make asinine claims. Seriously, we can’t rip CDs to MP3s? The only end that would serve is to put record stores out of business. But I digress. This is about mobile music, and how by the year 2012, mobile music sales are forecasted to top the $1 billion mark. It reminds me of the episode of South Park where the kids see that Britney Spears has been forced to downgrade to a Gulfstream 2 because of illegal downloads.
Read the rest of Think of the starving artists: Mobile music to be worth $1 billion…