How Nokia Plans To Reshape The Music Industry
Nokia may not get the headlines that the iPhone, Blackberry and even Palm Pre does, but when the world's largest cell hone manufacturer says that it wants to remake the music and entertainment industries from the ground up, everyone should probably listen.
Last year, Nokia sold 472 million cell phones and generated revenue $70 billion. According to Fast Company,
it is the world's 88th largest company revenue with 1.1 billion
customers. Nokia operates 150 countries with devices in 180 languages.
Nokia's overall share of the global cell-phone market is bigger than its
next three competitors combined.
Nokia designs products based on the principle that there are three reasons why people adopt new technologies: survival, social, and entertainment. And in addition to investing in technology that company has invested heavily in studying how people in different cultures and environments use their mobile devices. The result are more than 100 different cell models that sell for between $10 and $700.
How the company plans to remake the music industry, particularly since 9 out of 10 in the U.S. don't listen to music on their cells, is still very much a work in progress, but the collaborations between Nokia EVP of Entertainment & Communities Tero Ojanperä and musician / technologist / consultant Dave Stewart (video after the jump) offer some initial insights.
"We both connected very deeply around the idea that a cell phone is really just an empty shell," says Stewart. "And we also agreed that content is the seed." One early experiment is singer Cindy Gomez who Stewart and Ojanperä are launching as the star of the Dance Fabulous mobile game which Nokia debuted on 40 million handsets in June.
Another hint of the breadth of Nokia's plans comes from Ojanperä's willingness to use his pulpit to sore out the global publishing quagmire that has become a major stumbling block for music technology innovation , "We struck a cross-continent licensing arrangement with all the majors. Our plan is to change the whole landscape of how music publishing works, and I think it is going to be a better direction for everyone."
I really like Nokias drive for innovation. The claim is bold but this is exactly what companies this big should be aiming for. I will hold some skepticism till I see some real successes from this however.
Nokia is a company that discovered the cell phone is a shell…content is the seed. The jewel case/digipack for CDs is a shell, a vessel that carries intellectual content created from the heart and soul of many talented musicians who earn their living making music. Many of them have dedicated their entire lives to a craft, an art form that will live on forever.
Can you imagine the hissy fit Beethoven would have if he were alive over the posers who want to control the music world.
First, everyone, including high courts continue to say music has no inherant value. Yet, every major tech company on the planet wants to control it. What is wrong with this picture?
Janet Hansen
Scout66.com
Has anyone tried using a Nokia 5800 Comes With Music?? It’s awful. Nokia need to learn how to make a “seed” that’s intuitive and user friendly first. The more they move from making phones to being a “social company” the worse the software in their phones gets. The ironic sentence: Nokia’s going to change the music business, but their first artist is signed to Universal.
All handset makers will hugely benefit by partnering with companiees with expertise outside of their domains and with genre specific experience. They are also missing a HUGE part of the game by only dealing with currently signed artists. http://www.punchmediagroup.net
Handset makers will really begin to win when they partner with companies that provide benefits outside of their internal expertise. They also need genre specific specialsts. If they did, they’d know a huge opportunity rests in artists who formerly had deals with majors rather than continuing to run after the majors all the time. http://www.punchmediagroup.net
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK
Don’t hold your breath, I won’t.
If they do, great, if not, whatever.
They still haven’t released a touch-screen smartphone that is nice as the Pre or iPhone:
how do you think these geeks will ever understand Music content, no matter how many Content companies they acquire?
It will 2.5 years before they can even think about getting there, and, I have too many albums to release/distribute/market before then.