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Mobile music to reach $13B by 2011

Ringtones and ringback tones, with full-track downloads slowly playing a larger role, will drive the majority of the growth of global mobile music market that will reach $13 billion by 2011, according to a forecast by research firm Informa Telecoms & Media.

The greatest proportion of these revenues will emanate from Asia-Pacific which accounts for 56% of the market total in 2006, with Japan making up 46% of this total in 2006. Informa stresses that a new growth market in China will start to become evident by 2011, when the region contributes 25% to overall Asia-Pacific revenues and is the next mobile music hot spot.

In conjunction with the mobile operators who have concentrated on rolling out advanced music services, the handset vendors have exerted equal time and energy over the last year establishing advanced handsets that have MP3 functionality and large hard drives. Thus the notion of the mobile handset as a realistic rival to the iPod is gaining impetus, noted the research firm.

And people, please stop saying mobile is an iPod killer. There is no iPod killer, just an expansion of the marketplace. To whit: "It is absolutely imperative that the industry understands that mobile music is not going to replace the iPod in the same way that the iPod is not going to prevent growth of mobile music," says Informa analyst Nicky Walton.

On the other hand, news out of MIDEM 2007 music industry trade fair in Cannes, France: A clutch of independent record labels and trade groups from more than a dozen countries have signed with Merlin, a new nonprofit licensing agency that will negotiate deals on their behalf with music download sites and mobile content distributors.

The Netherlands-based Merlin, which bills itself as a "one-stop licensing shop," will enable digital platforms to access its representatives' music catalogs in one deal, as opposed to myriad separate negotiations; labels may also continue selling independently via their existing distribution networks.

Beggars Group chairman, Martin Mills, told The Wall Street Journal, Merlin will effectively create a "virtual fifth major [label]" with its combined catalog: "Merlin will license collectively the individually unlicensable," he said.

Source: FierceMobileContent and DigiTimes Telecom

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