This report highlights how mobile social networking is beginning to provide a significant push to mobile music services and the likely impact on the market in the next 5 years.

Informa Telecoms & Media believes that the integration of social networking and community features in a mobile music service can drive service usage and adoption by:

- Making the service more user-friendly and enabling easy discovery of music tracks.

- Reducing churn and making the service more sticky (users will continue to subscribe to stay
connected with friends and contacts).

- Promoting digital gifting where users purchase ringtones, music tracks and albums to give as gifts
to other community members.

- Generating higher revenues through discounts and promotions by sponsors to community
members. For example, a community member who recommends an album or music track
receives a reward if the content is purchased by other community members as a result of the
recommendation.

- Driving the market for mobile music sales direct to fans through artist driven websites.

The mobile music industry generated over $9 billion in revenues in 2008. This includes revenues from
ringtones, ringback tones, full-track downloads and music streaming services (excluding music videos).
Many operators throughout the globe are therefore now offering mobile social
networking services as part of their business strategy.

Analysis courtesy of Patrick Ncho of www.marketing-mobile.org

Source: Informa.com

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