Jun 11, 2001 12:00 PM,

Bring in the mobile funk

by Lynnette Luna

MP3 players have taken the U.S. by storm, and MP3.com, the world's largest online music distributor, hopes to replicate that success on the mobile phone.

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Handset vendors such as Samsung have been attaching MP3 players to mobile phones for nearly a year, but Shawn Conahan, MP3.com vice president and head of MP3 Mobile, said that marrying MP3.com's capability on the software and Internet side will give music downloads a widespread presence in the mobile community.

“The goal now is to create a distribution channel to deliver content to any device capable of receiving it,” Conahan said.

Analysts have dismissed the idea of downloading music onto wireless phones, calling the approach expensive and technically problematic because they envision customers eating up their airtime as they download music in the same manner they would from the Internet. But Conahan said it doesn't make sense to replicate MP3.com's Web experience in a mobile environment, at least not in the first generations of the service.

“Even the second-generation handsets will not have the capability to even output stereo sound, so why should we deliver sound at a quality that the handset cannot represent anyway?” he said.

Because of this, MP3 Mobile plans to crank down the bit rate of audio files sent to handsets and provide mono files instead of stereo. This, Conahan said, will be effective for the type of content it wants to provide, such as downloadable music ring tones, song samples, access to personal My MP3 accounts and the ability for customers to send music greetings to friends. Once carriers deploy high-speed networks, customers will be able to download music as well.

“MP3 Mobile follows the same philosophy that made MP3.com so successful, namely that content must be presented in different ways to extract maximum value,” Conahan said. “Music is personal, but also broadly applicable. It refreshes often and hits the sweet spot of the carrier looking for the killer application.”

MP3 Mobile has chosen Qualcomm's Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW) as its platform for content via CDMA handsets.

“At the moment, I'm mirroring the popularity of MP3, so the bulk of the user base is CDMA in North America, hence the reason to go with BREW. The timing of BREW is just perfect,” Conahan said.

MP3 Mobile supports BREW, a competitor to wireless application protocol and Java, because of the short development time for MP3 applications. The jury is still out, however, as to how widely BREW will be adopted.

“It's not a slam dunk,” said John Yuzdepski, vice president and general manager of Sprint PCS.com. “The market has to validate BREW. The closer we can stay to Internet standards, the better.”

Still, Conahan said some CDMA carriers have created a BREW liaison, which indicates strong interest in the platform. MP3 Mobile applications should arrive around the same time CDMA operators deploy higher-speed 1XRTT systems later this year, he added.

MP3.com's entrance into the mobile space also may become much easier now that media conglomerate Vivendi Universal plans to purchase the company for $372 million in cash and stock. Vivendi wants to use MP3.com to compete with other online music companies. It's unclear how the buyout will affect MP3 Mobile's deployment, but Conahan said the company is charging ahead.

MP3 Mobile has yet to publicly announce any relationships with carriers, but Conahan expects to present a co-branded application that leverages carriers' customer relationships and MP3.com's brand and user base of music fans. MP3 Mobile would split a subscription fee with a wireless carrier and Qualcomm, each getting its share according to the value they add in provisioning the application, Conahan said. Subscription fees will range from $1 to $5 per month, depending on the package each wireless carrier offers.