Let me entertain you... on your mobile phone

Quoted from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

'By Paul Kendall and Natalie McGourty
(Filed: 14/08/2005)

He has had worldwide sales of more than 32 million and has had 19 top 10 hits, but that is still not enough for Robbie Williams. The 31-year-old singer will make his mark again in October when the singles from his new album are made available to mobile telephone users two days before they go on sale on CD.

Williams, his record company EMI and the mobile telephone operator T-Mobile have agreed an 18-month deal to give music fans exclusive access to songs on their telephones before they reach record shops. The release of Trippin', from the new album Intensive Care, is expected to be the first new single to reach fans via the mobile network.
Each song will cost from £1.50 to download, the same as T-Mobile charges for a ring tone.
Following in the wake of Crazy Frog, the mobile telephone ring tone that topped the charts in May, the deal is the latest leap forward in the digital music revolution. Digital music downloaded from the internet and mobile telephones is becoming increasingly popular and is expected to account for 20 per cent of all music sales in Britain by 2008.
The mobile telephone networks Vodafone, Orange and O2 already provide a catalogue of 500,000, 300,000 and 185,000 tracks respectively (at a cost of between £1 and £1.50 each) on a limited range of handsets. On Friday, Sony Ericsson launched its new Walkman telephone and later this year Nokia is expected to bring out a music telephone capable of storing 1,000 songs, the same volume as an iPod mini. Apple is also jumping on the bandwagon, teaming up with Motorola to produce an iTunes telephone.
Matthis Immel, the vice-president of consumer marketing at T-Mobile, said the deal with Williams heralded a new era for the music and communications industries.
"Mobile phones are set to become the dominant digital music players," he said. "Three hundred million people have mobile phones in Europe and within five to six years the majority of phones will have digital music capability. That far exceeds the number of iPods."
The increased capacity of mobile telephones to download and play music would also affect the way people shopped, he said. "If you hear a song you like on the radio while you're in your car, you'll be able to download it immediately."
John Leahy, the marketing and creative director of EMI Records, said the partnership "signposted the way forward in the music business" but it was unlikely that digital music telephones would replace the CD and CD player.
"Mobile phones are a new market, but CD sales are still very important to us and will be in the foreseeable future. CDs will still dominate in five years' time."
Williams said agreements between artists and mobile companies to distribute music would become increasingly popular. "The future is music by mobile," he said.
The partnership might be good news for mobile telephone networks, established musicians and large record companies. However, the trend might make some overnight wonders even more transient.
Paul Rees, the editor of Q magazine, pointed out that music lovers were bombarded by more songs from more sources than ever before.
"You used to hear singles only on Top of the Pops or Radio One. Now there are far more outlets," he said. "People become aware of music quicker. That's why there's such a quick turnaround of artists.
"A band like Keane, for example, can, in the space of 12 months come from nowhere and sell 1.4 million albums. But another band can take their place just as quickly." '