MFORMA CHARTS MOBILE MUSIC SERVICE WITH BILLBOARD

After last year's launch of its Hot Ringtones ranking, pop music chart publication Billboard officially is entering the mobile content space this week at CTIA's Wireless 2005 show in New Orleans, teaming with mobile entertainment publisher and distributor Mforma to create its own multimedia service, Billboard Mobile.

Upon its April launch, Billboard Mobile will deliver ringtones, news and trivia integrated closely with the magazine's weekly chart listings, which rank the nation's most popular singles and albums in a number of genres, in addition to counting down the hottest ringtones (launched at last fall's CTIA I.T. and Entertainment event.)

Users can navigate Billboard Mobile content according to genre, chart rankings, artist, song or album, or concert event. Pages dedicated to particular artists will include their available ringtones as well as photos, record reviews and tour dates culled from Billboard's multimedia archives.

“Most of the ringtones applications that exist today feel a bit like you're flipping through a catalog, and they suck the joy out of the experience of buying music,” said Robert Tercek, executive vice president of programming at Mforma. “Music is packaged emotion, but most of the music storefronts existing on mobile today treat it as a commodity: ‘Here's a list of ringtones — scroll through it and find the artist you like and buy the song.’ To me, that's a pretty flat experience.”