Downloading music on cell phones is gaining popularity, but copyright issues are causing controversy. / Courtesy of SK Telecom |
By Tim Alper
Contributing Writer
With the imminent European release of Samsung's i450 music phone, the mobile music market is starting to get cutthroat. But experts are warning that restrictive anti-piracy laws might hurt the emerging demand for mobile phones that double up as music players.
The i450 was developed by the Korean electronics giants in association with Danish audio specialists Bang & Olufsen, and it comes equipped with high-quality inbuilt speakers and an expandable music memory.
The i450 is Samsung's reply to the Apple iPhone, one of the most talked-about pieces of hardware around right at the moment.
The iPhone is a mobile phone fitted with an 8GB MP3 player, which can download music directly from the Internet. Music lovers can now live without ever buying a specialized music player.
Samsung Electronics has also announced the launch of the F700 handset, set to be marketed in Europe, also equipped with a powerful MP3 player; and it seems the days of people carrying around a separate music player and phone are almost over
With new advances in mobile phones, personal music players are only a few years away from becoming completely redundant.
Other countries have quickly sat up and taken notice of the groundbreaking new download services offered by Korean mobile networks. Both SK's Melon and KT's Dosilak allow users to subscribe to an unlimited MP3 downloads sight by paying a flat monthly fee.
The foreign media have been impressed by Korea's mobile downloading services. American magazine BusinessWeek called SK's Melon service the ``the iPod killer,'' predicting that this kind of service would eliminate the need for people to carry music players and mobile phones.
Nearly 80 percent of mobile phones sold in Korea have now integrated music players. Moreover, Korean mobile producers expect to announce the sale of over 10 million MP3-playing handsets in 2007, a total of five times more than the number of stand-alone music players' sales forecasted for the same period.
But the Korean mobile music industry goes way beyond just downloading songs. SK Telecom believes almost 45 percent of their subscribers have signed up to their ``coloring'' service, which makes SK over 100 billion won a year.
SK also estimates wireless Internet and mobile data services make up around 40 percent of their total revenue.
The introduction of flat rate file music downloads is revolutionary, though, and it has proved to be an attractive one for customers. For only a relatively small fee, people are able to get as much music on their mobiles as they like.
Some companies have a financial backlash from introducing services like these.
A KT spokeswoman said, ``The introduction of flat rate services has been sudden, and it has damaged the price mechanism of the mobile market. This has limited growth in the mobile music market.''
Korean telecommunications giant SK admitted they find it hard to get customers to believe they actually need to pay to download music when so many people use illegal P2P programs to download files from the Internet.
She said, ``At the moment, because of file-sharing programs, customers feel digital contents can be copied for free. We are in the unenviable position of having to fight against the commonly held opinion that only an idiot would actually pay to download music. It's no mean feat persuading customers to think otherwise.''
To fight back against widespread audio piracy, big music companies have been working on making music files using Digital Rights Management (DRM). DRM files cannot be copied limitlessly, and can only be played on certain devices.
Music producers believe DRM protects musicians' copyright, ensuring that there will still be money to be made from making music in the future. Without a profit incentive, many musicians might give up on the idea of releasing music.
Another telecommunications giant KT thinks that most customers are not opposed, in principle to some form of copyright restriction. A spokeswoman said, ``Customers know they shouldn't be using illegal P2P services. We all have to respect that artists are doing a job and customers should pay fairly for what they want to listen to. It will help music producers to continue to make high-quality audio tracks for consumers.''
But not everyone thinks that DRM is an end-all for the copyright issue.
In 2006, music industry figures show that 20 billion songs were downloaded worldwide, but only 10 percent of those were DRM files.
U2 Systems are a Korean company, which develops interfaces for mobile users. Kim Jin-ah is a User Interface consultant. She thinks that DRM causes more problems than it solves. She says, ``There are lots of problems with DRM when it comes to MP3s. Copyright is an important issue for musicians and authors, but customers' rights are equally important, and DRM neglects this.''
Kim points out that DRM-protected files cannot always be interchanged between a customer's devices. She said, ``If a customer is trying to transfer a file from their mobile phone to their computer or MP3 player, it might not be possible, even though they have paid for the right to listen to that song. Music makers urgently need to solve this problem.''
And Kim thinks that many of the new mobile downloading services need to be redesigned to make them more appealing for users. She says, ``They are quite user-unfriendly. Their interfaces are overcomplicated and difficult to use. Most modern mobiles come with tiny screens so a simpler design would make it easier for customers to actually find what it is they are looking for.''
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