Music moves: Cingular sponsors YouTube band battle

In what is shaping up to be a significant day for mobile multimedia, and music in particular, Cingular announced it would be the first major company to partner with online video portal YouTube, sponsoring a battle of the bands for the enormously popular Web site and featuring the eventual winner in the carrier’s ringtone library. In addition, Sony-Ericsson said it is launching a new full-track over-the-air song download service independent of its carrier customers.

Cingular’s partnership with YouTube is certainly not its first foray into the independent music realm. At CTIA Wireless in the spring it unveiled a partnership with MySpace to create ringtones from original songs created by MySpace Music bands, which they could then market and sell from their MySpace pages. That deal, however, kept Cingular’s brand and corporate reputation separate from the project with no subsequent promotion on the Cingular MEdia content portal. Customers could only buy the ringtones from the individual band’s personal Web portals.

“The YouTube Underground contest is a natural extension to what we are already doing in the music space—using wireless technology to connect established as well as emerging musicians with their fans, and vice versa,” Cingular Vice President of Marketing John Burbank said in a statement.

The YouTube deal, however, puts the Cingular brand on the line. In addition to being a named sponsor and airing ads linked to the battle contestant’s videos, Cingular has agreed to promote the winning band in its content library, committing initially to selling a ringtone of the winning song on MEdia Net. The upside to such a promotion is heavy exposure for Cingular to customers of one of the most infectious user-generated sites on the Web. But that exposure carries risks. YouTube users post video content to the site with few restrictions and have run into problems with copyright infringement as well as posting material many people would consider obscene or offensive. Cingular would be in effect committing itself to promote content it has no control over. That might not be a problem for an MVNO like Amp’d Mobile, which targets a very specific young, hip subscriber base, but for a carrier like Cingular--with one quarter of the entire U.S. subscriber base—it has to make its brand appealing to vast array of constituencies from Soccer Moms to CEOs.

Cingular already encountered this issue when it announced its MySpace promotion. At the press conference at CTIA, the first band to record a MySpace ringtone, an Australian outfit named Shifter performed its song “Butter” for TV cameras and the industry press corps. Shifter, however, went off script and inserted the chant “Buy our F***ing ringtone!” into the song. While that was an isolated event that had no lasting effect on Cingular whatsoever, the deal with YouTube would get far more exposure.
Verizon Wireless did a similar promotion in the spring with MySpace, hosting its own battle of the bands among the MySpace music acts and eventually selling the winning band Parlor Boys’ single “Lovers” as a ringtone, video and full-track download over its V Cast Music Portal. But Verizon Wireless exerted considerable control over the selection process. MySpace and Cingular oversaw the initial entries, approving 4000 songs for the contest. After allowing the MySpace Community to vote on those entries determining five final contestants, Verizon Wireless and MySpace selected the Parlor Boys as the winner.

Cingular is also placing similar restrictions on the YouTube contest. Though the official submission rules have not yet been posted, YouTube members will vote only on the finalists. The final winner will be selected by Alexandra Patsavas of Chop Shop Music Supervision, an organization that oversees music selection on several prime time television shows. Even with those restrictions in place, the nature of the YouTube’s site, which allows any user to submit, rate and comment on content may be well out of Cingular’s control. On the YouTube page containing the Underground promotional video, users have already posted several comments attacking Cingular’s sponsorship of the site.

Meanwhile, across both oceans, Sony-Ericsson is jazzing up its music service even more, announcing Tuesday a full-track wireless music download service called M-Buzz, which will pit Ericsson directly against carriers for control of the mobile music dollar. The service is an expansion of its PlayNow music preview and purchasing service, Walkman music phone strategy and Sony online music initiatives. M-Buzz, however, adds a much richer experience on the phone, allowing customers to access band information, videos and performance schedules as well as download songs over the air for the first time.

The service, however, is now limited only to the music of Sony’s ATV publishing group, making its appeal as a comprehensive music service limited. Further limiting its appeal is the fact that service will probably never been seen in the U.S. Unlike in Europe and other markets, U.S. carriers rigidly control handset distribution to their customers, making it very unlikely they would sell Sony-Ericsson handsets with a competing music download application to their customers. Sony-Ericsson, in turn, seems to be keeping with those carriers’ wishes. The vendor said it would be shipping the M-Buzz client in its new W850 and W950 Walkman phones, which will be released in Asia, Europe and Latin America, but not in the U.S.

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