Forget Edith Piaf, Johnny Hallyday and Daft Punk; if Gallic media giant Vivendi Universal has anything to do with it, France's greatest contribution to pop history will be music on the move.
Tapping into the rich vein of enthusiasm for wireless entertainment services, next week Vivendi will launch Universal Music Mobile, a mobile phone service that allows lovers of melody to listen to new releases and buy CDs and concert tickets from their handsets. Should it prove successful in France, the company intends to begin rolling the package out across Europe next year.
Jean-Marie Messier, Vivendi's chief executive, told a Paris press conference: "Music, the culture of a generation, and the mobile phone, the fetish of a generation, inevitably had to meet."
From September 14, subscribers to the service will be able to dial up to hear sample tracks and previews by Universal artists, listen to news updates and receive preferential treatment and discounts when buying concert tickets or CDs. Users will also be able to download songs to MP3-equipped mobiles, and Vivendi believes that such benefits will persuade 200,000 French customers to sign up to the £9.49-a-month package before the end of the year.
With the latest figures from analysts Schema revealing that 79% of 15 to 24-year-olds in Western Europe have handsets and that 25% regularly use Wap and SMS-based services, music via mobile is increasingly regarded as the killer application that will drive mobile commerce forward. Vivendi competitor T-motion recently launched a similar offering as part of a premium news content package in Germany, while in the UK, Orange, Cellnet and Virgin Mobile are all developing a range of dial-in and SMS-based music services. The big question is: are people are ready to pay?
Virgin Mobile has enjoyed some success since the 1999 launch of a free music preview line allowing customers to listen to 30-second snatches of songs. The service has 400,000 users, but the company's head of communications, Steven Day, queries consumers' willingness to pay for Vivendi's service.
"Mobile music services can attract people who want to try before they buy, check out the latest releases or fill the odd idle moment, but we have seen no evidence that they would pay for them," says Day.
"Not only is the sound quality on current handsets relatively poor, but consumers are only just beginning to become familiar with the technology. Putting a cost barrier in place now will stifle the market."
Availability of suitable handsets also remains a major issue. Today, Siemens' SL45 model remains the only MP3-equipped unit in public circu lation and - even if the major mobile manufacturers honour their promises to release tooled-up machines within the year - that will not be the end of the story. The format has no digital rights management capabilities, and, as a host of new file types designed to prevent unauthorised use of copyright material emerge post-Napster, early adopters could find themselves upgrading their phones with alarming regularity.
According to Schema, such problems will ultimately be overcome, with the company predicting that the European market for accessing music over mobiles will grow to £1bn by 2005. Furthermore, the 20 to 30-minute per track download time required by the present generation of handsets will not be reduced until mass market 3G services begin to emerge in 2003.
"In broad market terms, the £3.8m Vivendi has invested in launching its service is a mere toe in the water," says Rodrigo Dauster, mobile business strategist at analysts KPMG Metrius. "It is good to experiment, but it will be some time before these services become a workable reality."
