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Nokia’s ‘Comes With Music’ may already have generated its first fan-site, but questions remain on the future for mobile music services - surely the usability factor doesn’t yet match desktop alternatives, such as iTunes?

Apple does offer the iTunes Store for WiFi, and has before been rumoured to hold plans for its very own mobile music service, though this may prove less successful if aimed at iPhone users alone. As an incremental addition, iTunes for WiFi offers something like a mobile experience.

That no one beyond Nokia appears yet to be aiming to offer a full package (hot potato) mobile music service, incumbents must surely be mulling the latest figures to come out of Japan.

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Futurist Gerd Leonhard talks about how the broadband-enabled, always-on world of digital natives equipped with 4.5 billion mobile devices impacts on emerging cultural practice.

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Music Ally’s Paul Brindley spent some time with REM manager Bertis Downs at the Resonancia Colombia conference in Bogota. Downs had some interesting things to say on digital music, “One of the first things I’ll say is nobody knows anything…”

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Way back we warned that you should expect a wave of iPhone applications from musicians promoting new albums, now Fall Out Boy has joined Snow Patrol, Pink, David Cook and the Nine Inch Nails in making a music-focused pitch at fans using the Apple device.

Fall Out Boy will introduce its own iPhone application before the December 16 release of new album “Folie a Deux”, Billboard helpfully notes.

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Can’t get enough of karaoke? Like to take space in the spotlight? Possessed by a pathological need to put yourself across?

Big Stage Entertainment’s new service could be a bit of fun for you, as it lets you pop self-made animated 3D performances into your Facebook or MySpace profile.

Phil Ressler, Big Stage Entertainment CEO said, “Big Stage Entertainment is making complex 3D modeling technology accessible for everyone to create a realistic, animated facial clone of themselves for the very first time.”

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The organisers of the interesting EconMusic event at the Natural History Museum last month have released a video of a panel session which took place during the event.

Focused on social networks, this featured UK singer/songwriter, Billy Bragg; David Hyman, CEO, Mog; Spencer Hyman, COO, Last.fm; Steve Purdham, CEO, We7; Danny Rimer, Partner, Index Ventures. It’s worth a watch.

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EMI plans to enter the increasingly crowded online music and video sales market with its own download service, to be made available through its existing portal, EMI.com.

The company already has some experience in this - it has been offering its Share service to music journalists for some while in order to securely distribute pre-release music to them for review.

There’s a strong likelihood the site will offer music streaming, as it is being described as a “learning lab” for people to discover new music. The company is increasingly forging its own digital destiny in online music - it’s no suprise last year’s biggest digital story comes from former EMI act, Radiohead, for example.

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A new indie artist-friendly streaming music service, Spotify, has launched last night in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Finland, Norway and Sweden, with more countries to come in the weeks ahead.

Founded by Daniel Ek & Martin Lorentzon (pictured), Spotify is a refreshing breath of air after the partially major-label owned MySpace Music apparent unwillingness to treat indie labels as peer partners for its somewhat confusing music service.

In a late announcement last night, global indie label trade association Merlin confirmed it has signed up as a “fifth major” for the launch of the new on-demand streaming music service. Read the rest of this entry »

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MySpace Music may be in a strong position to influence the development of online music, but analysts and industry pundits appear underwhelmed by what’s on offer.

We know that 12 per cent of European internet users visit artist pages on social networking sites and that they are also more likely than all other online music consumers to pay for digital downloads and listen to online radio.

However, independent artists are already angry with the new MySpace offering as the service has refused to reach an equable deal with them. And they see this a potential collusion among the major labels, each of whom actually own a stake in MySpace, a place for major label friends.We think this scathing criticism of the service from Bob Lefstz is well worth repeating:

“Content is not king, distribution is.  That’s what gave the major labels their power.  They could get the records in the store and get paid for them too!  But with anybody able to get their stuff on iTunes, the labels needed another monopoly.  Hence, MySpace Music.

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Last.fm has introduced a second version of its Last.fm application for the iPhone, introducing a range of features and improvements.

Here’s the feature breakdown:
- vastly improved user interface all around (tap to zoom album art included)
- Ability to tag songs
- Personal tag radio
- Calendar based events view
- Common artists when viewing a user profile
- Many other usability and back-end features

The application is available in the US, UK, Canada, Germany, Spain and France. The company is also working to make streaming more reliable on slower connections, revealed Toby Padilla on the Last.fm blog.

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