Warner signs two mobile content deals
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Warner Music Group  announced on  Wednesday new deals with two leading mobile operators to  deliver its mobile music content across the Middle East, North  Africa and Europe.
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Questions filled the air Monday as the mobile industry geared up for one of its biggest U.S. trade shows on Monday by focusing on entertainment.AT&amp;T got a head start on the CTIA Wireless IT &amp; Entertainment show in San Francisco by unveiling an upcoming music service with Napster. But even AT&amp;T said the best business model for mobile entertainment is still being worked out.The market for mobile entertainment still pales in comparison to messaging, which more than half of AT&amp;T&#39;s customers use, said Mark Collins, vice president of consumer data at the nation&#39;s biggest carrier, which has about 63 million subscribers. Collins thinks mobile entertainment will catch on to that degree, but the jury is out on the best business model for getting there, he told a large crowd at a pre-show entertainment conference.On Monday, AT&amp;T announced it will let consumers download songs over the air from a Napster catalog of more than 5 million songs. The Napster Mobile service, due to become available in mid-November, will offer single songs for $1.99 each and a monthly subscription for $7.49. The subscription will let customers download five songs each month. Features for discovering new music and keeping up with favorite artists will also be included.The service is meant to complement song downloads to PCs for later &quot;sideloading&quot; to a phone, said Gregg Brown, who handles strategic marketing and business development for music at AT&amp;T. The carrier already offers that type of service but believes some consumers want to be able to buy songs immediately, he said. A copy of each song bought over the air can also be automatically delivered to the customer&#39;s PC.It&#39;s an example of the try-anything approach carriers and content makers are taking to mobile entertainment. Also at the pre-show conference, ESPN Senior Vice President for Digital Media John Zehr said the sports media company closed down its MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) business last year because it had a harder time than expected selling handsets in retail stores. It also was unfair to sports fans to make them switch service providers and phones just to get ESPN&#39;s mobile content, Zehr said.Now ESPN&#39;s content is offered through Verizon&#39;s portal. Soon the company will add social networking to help fans of certain teams keep in touch, Zehr added.ESPN&#39;s goal is to make it as easy as possible for consumers to find its content -- preferably on the &quot;idle&quot; screen of the phone whenever they look at it, Zehr said. Carriers should find a way to determine what each subscriber would want to see on that screen, or ask them, rather than making them take the initiative, he said.But ESPN has another thing coming if they hope to dictate placement, according to IDC analyst Shiv Bakhshi.&quot;The content provider never controls the environment of consumption,&quot; Bakhshi said.Clashes happen partly because the market is so young and demand is still little known, AT&amp;T&#39;s Collins said. It&#39;s hard to work out business models that satisfy carriers, content providers and advertisers, he said. Everyone wants to get into the mobile world because cell phones are ubiquitous, but carriers can&#39;t pay top dollar for content when the customer base isn&#39;t that big yet. Device makers add another layer of complexity.&quot;We can&#39;t just take the cable television or the broadcast model and superimpose it on this business,&quot; Collins said. The right model will be some mix of advertising, subscribers paying for content, and makers of programming selling it to carriers, he said.
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Welcome to Toon town 3GSM Warner Music Group (WMG) will deliver music content to mobiles in both Europe and Asia in a deal with Norwegian mobile operator, Telenor.â¦
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As if to answer the question, "What's the real value of the paid content deals YouTube is not making with content providers like Viacom?" today, two new deals with NBC Universal were announced: one with the burgeoning player in the IPTV space, MobiTV, and the other with an emerging YouTube competitor, VMIX.com.
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Deal will make "Heroes" and "The Office" available as video-on-demand options for mobile subscribers, CNBC as a streaming live feed.
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LOS ANGELES  - Mobile ESPN is back on the line. After hanging up its branded cellular phone package in September, the Walt Disney Co. is re-entering the wireless business with a pair of deals announced Thursday with Verizon Wireless and MediaFlo USA.
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Warner will be North American distributor for U.K.-published titles such as Operation Flashpoint.
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Two vendors are releasing products for the enterprise that enable what they claim is seamless switching between cellular and standard voice-over-IP calls.
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Microsoft has announced a version of their digital rights management platform geared specifically for mobile content.
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Warner Music Group has struck a $73.5 million deal to purchase a controlling stake in the independently run Roadrunner music label.
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A revenue-sharing deal between video startup YouTube Inc. and Warner Music Group Corp. is likely to be the first of a spate of content distribution partnerships between Web sites and music companies, industry officials say.
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Warner Music Group has signed a deal to allow its entire catalog to be played over the fast-growing social networking music service Last.fm, the innovative site that links music fans to new and old hits.
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MIAMI (Billboard) - A girl and a song. Warner Music Latin  America is banking on that combination to bolster mobile music  sales of its catalog.
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LOS ANGELES  - Mobile ESPN is back on  the line. After hanging up its branded cellular phone package  in September, the Walt Disney Co. is re-entering the wireless  business with a pair of deals announced Thursday with Verizon  Wireless and MediaFlo USA.
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Hollywood movies studios Warner Bros.  and Universal Pictures have formed a joint venture with Digital  Cinema Implementation Partners to explore new digital delivery  for digital cinema systems, the companies said.
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The two mobile broadband firms partner on a nationwide network.
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MFORMA Group and Marvel Enterprises announced that the companies will bring content based on Marvel&#39;s brands to mobile phone users.