The rise in musicphones has spurred adoption of mobile music consumption across the United States and Western Europe, according to M:Metrics, the mobile media firm. It reports that sideloading accounts for 83 percent of mobile music usage across France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. Among other methods, sharing music outpaces full-track mobile downloading in the majority of these markets.
With the exceptions of Spain and the United States, more mobile music consumers listened to music that was shared (for example, between phones via Bluetooth), than was downloaded directly to the phone using a music service. France and the UK posted the highest frequency of this activity, accounting for 12.5 percent of those who listened to mobile music in the month. At the other end of the spectrum was Spain, with only 7.1 percent of mobile music users transferring music between devices.
"Mobile music is quickly catching on, and the fact that consumers are sharing music demonstrates its potential as a social, viral phenomenon centered on mobile handsets," said Jen Wu, analyst, M:Metrics. "The proliferation of musicphones is causing a shift in digital music toward the mobile platform, which opens numerous opportunities for music-related content, services, hardware and accessories built to accommodate or enhance these mobile music activities."
The measurement firm found that 10.7 percent of mobile subscribers across the six geographies reported listening to music on their mobile device, ranging from 5.7 percent in the United States to 20 percent in Spain.
Musicphone penetration has grown considerably in the United States and Western Europe, at an aggregated rate of 50.7 percent growth from November 2006 to November 2007 across the six geographies. The United States is the fastest-growing market, with 63.6 percent growth, from 23.2 million subscribers owning musicphones in November 2006 to 63.8 million one year later. Musicphones include all mobile handsets that are, at a minimum, capable of digital music playback (AAC, MP3, MPEG-2 AAC, MPEG-4 AAC+ or WMA codecs) and storage (greater than 47MB or support for memory expansion) or are a smartphone.