mjelly mobile 2.0 blog

Bluetooth and mobile marketing for live music events @The Streets Electric Proms

So the other week I went to see The Streets play at The Roundhouse in Camden, it was a brilliant concert but what stood out for me was the way the promotors had integrated mobile marketing into the live music event experience.

As you entered the concert venue there were people going around with bluetooth blip stations (bluecasting servers round their necks) offering to beam you a free "Streets" screensaver if you turned on your bluetooth.

Being a mobile geek I happily agreed to this and got sent the screensaver below:

 

Here is is on my N95 8GB

I asked the lady doing the beaming if it was popular or not and she said "yes very" and claimed "more than one in 10" people were going for it.  It did actually look like quite a lot of people were interested while I was hanging around there.  Anyway I thought this was a great way of adding to the music experience by giving you some free mobile content - the potential is obvious - in a couple of years time it will be easy to beam a clip of the latest album or music single onto people's phones at concerts, load bookmarks etc etc. 

A lot of people complain about Bluetooth marketing or blue-spamming as some call it but this example shows that if it's done right it can work really well.  Having an actual person there to explain it and deliver the download makes a lot of sense as they can deal with any concerns, issues and actually walk people through the process of turning on their bluetooth, saving the content etc. 

As well as the bluetooth content blasting, they had a couple of other mobile bits and bobs around the venue.  For example, there was a massive banner with a short-code on it for sending your photos and SMS to:

So nice to see mobile really doing something interesting in the live music events space - if anyone knows the company that was involved in this let us know in the comments. 

Why Mobile Phones will kill the ipod

At the moment the Apple ipod is synonymous with portable music players and listening. However, the next few years are likely to see the ipod being wiped out as mobile phone handsets replace standalone mp3 players, for the vast majority of users.  This change is going to come about through a wide range of reasons. 

Firstly, digital storage is becoming increasingly cheap, which allows mobile phone handsets to incorporate space for 1000s of mp3s at limited cost. Already, the latest mobile music phone’s frequently include 10 GB of removable memory. 

Second, a wide range of mobile handsets are now being specifically marketed as “music phones”. For example, Sony-Ericsson has the Walkman series , Nokia has the N Series.

In terms of sheer volume, mobile phone handsets sell several orders of magnitude more devices each year than standalone mp3 players. Since launch Apple has sold over 100m ipods (as of April 2007), however, each year, nearly 1 billion mobile phone handsets are sold. In terms of scale, Apple just can’t compete. 

For users, carrying more than one device is always going to be less convenient than an “all-in-one” solution. When mobile mp3 players become “good enough” it is likely that more and more people will forgo a separate mp3 player unless they demand very high end or specific functionality. 

The ability of mobile phone handsets to take on functions from a range of other technologies can be seen in the example of time-display. A common site these days when people ask for the time is someone reaching into their pocket for their mobile phone. The built-in clock has effectively removed the need to buy or carry a separate watch. 

Finally, the main reason why mobile phones will beat the ipod is that the ipod itself is becoming a phone. With the launch of the iphone and the itouch Apple has announced its intention to integrate some form of telephony/ internet capability into its products. Ultimately, the standalone mp3 player may become only a niche part of its overall range of converged mp3 player/ mobile phone devices.

So, for all these reasons, mobile phones are going to beat the ipod.

Nokia MD4 mobile speakers

Nokia have released these small MD4 speakers which you can attach to your phone, they've got an inbuilt amplifier in them.  Probably going to cause a lot of problems on the top of buses where people are already pissing one another off by playing tunes out their phone but at least the sound quality is going to be better....  We might do a review of some of the different mobile speakers on the market in the near future so stay posted. 

337studios.com tunes on mjelly

Max respect going out to the one like Sketta Lee from 337 Studios for the new ringtones up on mjelly right now.  337 Studios are an upfront music production and design company and they've produced some sounds which you can download as free mp3 ringtones on mjelly under the 337studios.com tag

Smausse by Sketta Lee (337Studios.com)

Soft it up by Sketta Lee (337Studios.com)

Off it by Sketta Lee (337Studios.com)

Ringading by Sketta Lee (337Studios.com)

Nice one. To download them hit m.mjelly.com on your handset browser or go to the 337 Studios blog or forum . 

 

iphone ringtone - wap hosted version for easier download

So gizmodo put up a version of the iphone ringtone on their site - only thing is you need a data cable to transfer it from the PC.  There's a wap version available if you hit m.mjelly.com on your handset browser (browse for it or hit code 1844).

You can locate it online here

iphone ringtone wap download

Free mp3 ringtones on mjelly

Heads up - we've got loads of free mp3 ringtones up on mjelly now   - check them out here on the mjelly website using the free and free mp3 ringtones tags.  To download them just hit m.mjelly.com on your phone wap browser and either enter the code that you'll find on the website or hit the free mp3 ringtones link at the bottom of the wap page.

You can get an RSS feed here to chuck into bloglines, netvibes or whatever and keep you updated when the new stuff comes through.

Changes by Chris Lake top search on mjelly

It seems it's all about the big 2k6 electro house anthems on mjelly at the moment.  After Fedde Le Grand - Put your Hands up for Detroit the main track people are searching for on mjelly right now is Changes by Chris Lake.  We've got a decent poly version up on the site, looking forward to getting the truetones up once we can get a licensing deal.  There's a really good dark electro-mix of Changes which would be great as a ringtone.

The track also has a wicked video - see here:

Nokia Remix ringtones on mjelly

Lots of interest in the Nokia Remix mp3 downloads we have on mjelly so we've created a tag for them - you can find them all by hitting "Nokia remix" on the tags page.

These are all free - all good publicity for Nokia...

Mobile music sharing over bluetooth

According to the BBC, a recent survey that showed 1/3 of 8 to 13 year old UK kids share music using bluetooth and another 45% want to. 

If you download mobile music from the portal of an operator like Orange or Vodafone or from someone like Mobmusic or Jamster then its generally impossible to share the track over bluetooth as it's normally protected by DRM (digital rights management) technology that prevents this. 

The major record labels dont really like people sharing stuff but there's lots of indie bands, producers, record labels and MCs out there who dont mind and on the web a lot of music stores are starting to sell music in mp3 without DRM - check out DJDownload, emusic, amiestreet and mp3tunes for example.  At the moment there's no-one doing this for mobile really which means no bluetooth sharing.  Here at mjelly we're trying to build up a load of mp3 ringtones, clips and tracks which are DRM-free - so you can share them more easily - so stick with us and watch this space. 

Put your hands up for detroit is the top download on mjelly

Probably not surprising but the top ringtone download at the moment on mjelly is Put Your Hands up For Detroit by Fedde le Grande

This was a massive tune in Ibiza this year and since then its gone mainstream, hitting the top of the charts here in the UK and elsewhere. 

If you like the tune there's similar ringtones and mp3s on mjelly in the electro house and funky house categories.

Here's the youtube video