Mobile music has punched above its weight on operator portals, but is the next wave going to take consumers away from the need to download music, to accepting an on demand streaming mode?
Consider this scenario: you're in the mood for some mobile tunes and must choose between paying per song to download a handful of tracks to your mobile, or simply pay a modest subscription to listen to as much 'streamed' digital music as you want, in some cases choosing from a library of over 250,000 songs to browse at your leisure. Which would you prefer – downloading or streaming?
Mobile music streaming services are a breakthrough alternative to more established MP3 music download services.
With music streaming, subscribers can access hundreds of thousands or millions of tracks, create their own Play Lists and even 'bookmark' the songs they want to listen to for a monthly subscription fee, in contrast to downloading which involves storing all the tracks locally on the device, and usually the customer is charged for each track downloaded.
Consumers expect music streaming to be a very enjoyable and user-friendly experience. They want problem-free playback, and when a song is interrupted by a phone call or other such event they should be able to seamlessly return playing the song at the previous point as soon as the interruption finishes.
Users should also be able to access published playlists and create and share their own playlists within the operator's music community. A music service should fulfil the basic requirements (i.e. allow access to listen to music), but increasingly advanced features are now regarded as standard.
Download Dominates
Both mobile and Internet music services available today still rely on download as the dominant delivery method. The reason is partly historic and may also be due to customer familiarity; the file transfer paradigm so popular in the Internet domain was easily applied to mobile.
File transfer is simple to develop and to use, and so took gained popularity before the first streaming services appeared. Consumers are also very familiar with downloading files to their personal computers and having a physical copy to keep on their machines.
Streaming was considered a great new way to deliver content (such as music and broadcast TV) over the Internet, while allowing the broadcaster to retain access and payment control.
In the personal computer realm, it was not so critical that streaming reduced the file storage requirements, because disk space has increased significantly in recent years. Considered more important was that streaming provided near-instant access to content and eliminated the wait to download the files themselves. Streaming also enabled live broadcasts to be delivered over the Internet to thousands of people worldwide.
Devices
Considering the mobile devices themselves, the much-hyped iPhone is a great MP3 player and user-friendly gadget but a considerable drawback is that it's incompatible with the current high-speed (3G) networks. The iPhone and iTunes also force the user into a proprietary music format and thus remain dependent on one provider, and one device, for all their music.
While some may not see this as a major limitation, it does restrict flexibility and makes it a challenge to have your music in several places at once (mobile phone, MP3 player, and personal computer). Therefore, streaming is a realistic alternative that can overcome some of the limitations of downloading the restricted music formats.
Download Limitations
Mobile music (and video) services do not always provide a great user experience when the content is downloaded. An important reason relates to storage space on the mobile and time. Popular mobiles still have quite limited storage and slow network speeds, and customers commonly have to pay for airtime or every packet of data sent across the wireless network (at least in North America).
Furthermore, additional software can be needed to help the user manage the files on the mobile, and basic file administration (such as moving, copying and sorting) is usually very hard to do on such a device, often forcing the user to delete songs already purchased to free up space for new ones.
Another point is that Digital Rights Management (DRM) protection locks the downloaded files to a specific device (so called forward-lock); whilst a streaming-based solution can be very open in terms of moving content to other devices.
How Streaming Works
A very simple analogy to illustrate how streaming works is be that of taking a bath (a 'download') in contrast to a shower (a 'stream'): when taking a bath it's necessary to fill the tub with water to the desired level before getting in, whereas with a shower you can turn on the water and get in straight away!
Typically with a shower the flow rate (or data) is lower but you can actually finish sooner as you don't have to wait so long at the beginning.
With streaming, content can be played even while the data packets are still being sent over the network, so there is no need to wait until a complete file has been fully downloaded. Therefore a song or movie can begin to play after only a very short delay (a few seconds in most cases).
And unlike a download no file is ever stored on the device; instead it has "streamed" through in its entirety but can easily be viewed again by repeating the process. Usually the stream requires consistent throughput (i.e. a steady network without too many variations) to give a good user experience, although some mobile streaming systems such as Vidiator's Xenon Streamer maintain the streaming quality even in varying network conditions that are inherent in wireless networks.
Benefits of Streaming to the Consumers
The key benefits of streaming to the consumer are that it requires no storage on the mobile and allows access to a vast library of content with minimal delay to start playback.
Some streaming servers including Xenon support user-created playlists, to play songs in the desired order or in a randomized shuffle mode. A music streaming service can be considered a network-based MP3 player giving the consumer their own personalized listening service.
With all these advantages, one may wonder why downloading still dominates the mobile music services available today?
A possible reason may be that until a few years ago there were no high-speed networks available at a competitive rate, which is essential to stream large amounts of data to the mobile. With the advent of 3G networks it is certainly now feasible to deliver high-quality music and video to customers.
Furthermore, when the mobile is out of network coverage it's not possible to receive any streams, in which case customers may prefer to download music to the mobile to play at any time.
Benefits of Streaming to the Mobile Operators
Streaming also benefits the carriers, as they can leverage their purchasing power with the music labels to create a massive song library and earn ongoing revenues from this investment. The licensing cost of a streaming platform should be reasonable enough to leave an attractive profit margin.
Carriers need not worry about digital rights management (DRM) restrictions as they are not "selling" the music, rather they're loaning it to the subscriber.
Music artists enjoy a similar benefit to the network operator, as rather than a one-off revenue from selling a song, they can receive recurring royalties if customers regularly listen to their favourite songs.
It should be realised that even though a streaming service can be a very interactive and dynamic approach for music services, it does face some technical challenges.
A streaming customer must be on-line with network access to play their songs. However, other components in the system can provide a transparent synchronization (where strategic parts of the content is synchronized between network and mobile when in-coverage), so that the streaming-based music service can operate in all scenarios, working smoothly also in areas of poor coverage and when the consumer needs to be off-line.
A mobile streaming service can provide a realistic alternative (or enhancement) to a download service, especially when delivered over a high-speed 3G network that has widespread coverage.
It can also provide features not possible with a download-only offering such as live events and longer music tracks, and saves considerable space on the user's device in addition to decreased time to wait to start playing (a key benefit in today's world where consumers want their products immediately).
With the shift in paradigm from download-only and greater user acceptance, there should be increased take-up of streaming services both on the Internet and in the mobile space – something which surely benefits consumers, content providers and carriers alike.
Roland Bank, is Product Manager, Xenon Technology for Vidiator.