Why Verizon's not ready for unlimited mobile music

Global handset leader Nokia has spent the past year rolling out its unlimited download music service, Comes With Music, which it claims has been a success around the world, both in terms of customer adoption and carrier response. It’s a success that Nokia hopes will transfer to the United States within the year, but US carriers may not be ready or willing to adopt that strategy on their own or with Nokia as their partner.

Verizon Wireless is one operator that will pass on unlimited – at least for now. The carrier has been in the mobile music business for the better part of three years, offering a la carte downloads of full-track music, which has seen meteoric growth, according to Ed Ruth, Verizon Wireless’ director of digital content and programming. The carrier also recently partnered with Real’s online music service Rhapsody for a subscription offering. Ruth said that since the service was introduced in July, the carrier has beat all its internal projections, although most consumers still opt for the tried-and-true over-the-air download service.

“At the end of the day, it’s about rounding out the offering to consumers and providing as many models as might be relevant to different consumer interest,” Ruth said. “Some want to buy it and others don’t need to. If they can access it when and where they want it, they don’t mind paying a monthly fee and getting access to content. It’s given us more choice to our customer and it’s given us results so far.”

THE BUSINESS OF MOBILE MUSIC

Still, for VZW, entering any business is first and foremost about profitability. Consumers may be interested in an all-you-can-eat music model like Nokia’s, but the carrier isn’t in a hurry to partner with Nokia for that service or even pave the way on its own. Ruth said Verizon is open to new models, but it would want to make sure that model was deployed as its own branded offering. His biggest issue with Comes With Music stems as much from Nokia’s involvement, as it does the music label’s. The industry has certain expectations around securing the commitment for this kind of unlimited yearly rate and volume discount. Music labels are prone to ask for a minimum guarantee when offering such a steep volume discount as Nokia is presumably getting.

“From a music offering perspective, we’re most interested in making sure our consumers have our defined experience,” Ruth said. “It’s important to make sure it’s a consistent experience and strategically speaking, we want to make sure we can carry that experience across many different screens – the mobile phone, the PC screen and potentially other screens we have consumer relationships on. We want to make sure we are in control of that deployment, not for the sake of control, but to make sure it’s consistent.”