Radio Disney goes mobile

Listeners select songs via mobile text messages

Radio Disney this week launched a Radio Disney Mobile Web site and text-messaging program for Disney fans on Web-enabled handsets. In conjuction with mDisney, Walt Disney Internet Group’s publisher of all mobile content for Disney brands, the service allows users to SMS message a short code, 347639 (DISNEY), to listen to Radio Disney, request a song or send a shout out, as well as access Disney’s mobile site and a listing of the top 30 songs currently playing.

Trish Halamandaris, vice president of marketing at mDisney, called the mobile Radio Disney service a natural extension of Disney’s online presence. The site already draws more than 27 million unique users each month. With more than 40% of “tweens” in the US owning cell phones, coupled with the success of Disney favorites like Hannah Montana and the High School Musical stars, Halamandaris said Disney already owns the demographic behind Radio Disney. The new service will stretch that connection a step further, targeting the tweens and their mothers and allowing users to interact with the radio station while on the go.

The network is already available to 97% of the US, including 50 terrestrial radio stations, RadioDisney.com, XM, Sirius satellite radio, iTunes radio tuner, XM/DirecTV and mobile phones. To date, mDisney has focused on publishing Disney-branded mobile games, graphics and tones on popular Disney characters and franchises like Hannah Montana to North American carriers. The company is focused on creating unique Disney mobile entertainment and content and growing the brand’s appeal. This week’s launch is a “mammoth” application for the company, Halamandaris said. It is also just the start of more to come. Plans to deepen and extend the Disney product line for uses organic to the mobile phone are already in the works, she said, citing mobile support of the theatrical release of the next Chronicles of Narnia movie as an application that will soon be launched.

While this represents Radio Disney’s first significant mobile Web presence for US consumers, it is not Disney’s first attempt at mobility. Banking on the power of its name, the icon launched a family-oriented MVNO last year in the US only to shut it down with barely a year in operation. The service focused on children-tracking services and parental controls rather than Disney’s wildly popular content. The company does, however, plan to revisit the idea with a more specific content focus in Japan. Disney announced last November that it will offer a mobile service over Japanese mobile operator Softbank’s network. The Walt Disney Internet Group has already gone the Web route in the UK, launching its mobile content and interactive services site offering for UK consumers in February of this year.