Mobile-exclusive music releases

Very soon, your mobile phone might be the only way the get the best new music first. In fact, some artists are producing mobile-exclusive content already...

As everyone knows, the ways in which we consume our music have changed dramatically over the past 25 years. At the start of the 80s, it was all vinyl and cassettes, then the CD started to dominate and remained pretty much unchallenged for the best part of two decades.

More recently, we've seen the computer and various audio compression technologies combine to revolutionary effect, while advanced mobile music systems mean that it's now possible to both download and listen to your music on your phone.

But this isn't the end of the story - it's just the beginning. Artists are now well aware of the importance of the mobile phone to the music industry, and are thinking up new and exciting ways to use it to get their tunes directly to fans.

Take Timbaland, for example, who recently announced that he's working on the world's first mobile-exclusive album for Verizon Wireless, a US mobile network. Under the terms of this deal, he'll release a song a month for the rest of 2008, but these will only be available to subscribers to V Cast, Verizon's mobile entertainment service.

"Every place don't get a CD [but] everybody has a mobile phone," says the all-conquering hip-hop producer, and he's right. OK, not everyone is signed up to the network that he's working with, but by sending his music directly to people's phones, he's breaking down the barriers between artist and fan. A track can be in the hands of the public on the same day that it's finished in the studio.

It's not just the music that fans can expect to have access to, either - footage of Timbaland at work in the studio will also be made available to V Cast subscribers. This will give them greater insight into how the tracks were made.

Don't go thinking that Timbaland is the only one to have gone down the mobile-only route, though. When Prince released Guitar, the lead single from his 2007 Planet Earth album, he gave the exclusive to Verizon. Even recently reformed rockers Led Zeppelin have got in on the act, signing a deal in October 2007 that enabled Verizon users to access a range of exclusive content.

The song may remain the same, but the distribution method is changing.

At the moment, mobile exclusive releases are the exception rather than the rule, but over the next few years, we can expect this situation to change. It's no secret that CD sales are going down, and it's highly unlikely that they'll go back up again.

So everything is up for grabs. When Radiohead released In Rainbows as a 'pay what you want' download last year - after rejecting the chance to sign another deal with a major record company - they demonstrated that the old rules no longer apply. Who knows, maybe they'll be the next band to release a mobile-only record; maybe one day, pretty much all of our new music will be delivered directly to our handsets?

No one knows exactly what's going to happen, but you can be sure that your mobile phone will be heavily involved.

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