Sony Ericsson Signs Exclusive Partnership with Justin Timberlake

According to Esato, Sony Ericsson has signed an Exclusive deal with Justine Timberlake backing his current 2007 European Future Sex/Love Show Tour.

"That unique experience is exclusive content via Vodafone through Sony Ericsson handsets, with a chance to win tickets (and meet Justin himself), as well as accessing a WAP site to stream some tunes, recorded live and specifically for the site.

And to follow, there will be exclusive mobile content of wallpapers, ringtones, and screen savers plus a unique remix of JT's Cry Me A River."

Drag and Drop on "Surface" to purchase ringtones

Forbes reports on Microsoft's "Surface," a coffee-table shaped computer that responds to touch and to special bar codes attached to everyday objects.

"Some of the first Surface models are planned to help customers pick out new cell phones at T-Mobile stores. When customers plop a phone down on the screen, Surface will read its bar code and display information about the handset. Customers can also select calling plans and ringtones by dragging icons toward the phone."

Picture from Engadget.

Beatnik speeds mobile music downloads

U.S. software company Beatnik.com is approaching mobile phone operators with a new music download system that compresses songs up to 10 times more than the MP3 format, allowing for faster downloads on lower-end mobile phones equipped with the company's software. InfoWorld reports.

"Beatnik's software compresses songs by taking common elements or repeated sounds and only replicating them once in the compressed file. The music player, on the client handset, can recreate those sounds in the right place during playback.

The decreased file size means songs download much faster over the same bandwidth, allowing users to start listening to the song as the rest of it is downloading"

Playing Cellphones on Stage Has Ring Of Respectability

For some avant-garde electronic artists, cellphones are musical instruments that can be incorporated into rock, hip-hop and even modern classical music. The WSJ reports.

"Some musicians have already taken cellphone music to an extreme.

-- An Austrian rock band called The handydandy named itself after the German term for mobile phone, handy. The band, which performs at electronic arts festivals in Europe and elsewhere, has done away with ordinary instruments altogether. Each member of the quintet straps a Sony Ericsson handset around his neck like a guitar and taps away on the buttons, making all the facial and bodily contortions of an Eric Clapton or Carlos Santana while producing very different results. Watch a video of their performance,

Some aspiring DJs and hip-hop artists are beginning to experiment with cellphone, too.

-- In the town of Slough, west of London, a youth center recently began a workshop on "mobile mashups." Using cellphones equipped with special mixing software, students with stage names like MC PanicPhaze learn to splice pieces of existing tunes, add all sorts of electronic effects, and record rap vocals on top.

-- The Chicago Sinfonietta kicked off its 20th season last fall with a "Concertino for Cellphones and Orchestra," a piece built around ringtones.

There's even a small technology industry emerging, mostly in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe, to serve the needs of mobile-phone musicians. The phones and other hand-held devices the Slough youth center uses, for example, come equipped with software called miniMIXA, made by the Tao Group. It turns a cellphone into a tiny sound mixer and recording studi.

Above left, classical musician (pianist and singer) Bora Yoon. Click here to hear her playing her song "Plinko" on a cellphone.

Related: - Links to other ringtone concerts and symphonies

Mobicious: One part iTunes, one part Google

Mobicious.com" - a name that came about by squeezing the words “ambitious,” “delicious” and “mobile” together - wants to make it easy for cell phone users to search for, download and rank the thousands of mobile services, ringtones, wallpapers of celebrities, weather alerts and video games. The Boston Herald reports.

"One part iTunes, one part Google, Mobicious.com" is planning a “soft” launch of its service this week.

By logging onto the company’s Web site" people can search for ringtones, wallpapers, streaming video, even horoscopes. Users can preview the content on the site and then have it sent directly to their phone. When a particular item, say a ringtone, costs money to download, Mobicious sends the user directly to that company’s own store.

The idea is to make finding and getting cell phone features easier."

U.K. Operators Beef Up Music Track Selection To Offset Slow Ringtone Sales

T-Mobile, Vodafone and Orange are increasing the number of music tracks to make up for flat ringtone sales, reports MocoNews.

"Orange is also stockpiling music content to offset the slowdown in mastertones.

Likewise, Vodafone is also growing its music offering – but will focus on genres such as Bollywood and classical music.

Vodafone has over 500,000 tracks on offer but only around 20 percent of these have ever been purchased. “You can have as much music as you like, but if the customer isn’t buying it then what’s the point?” said Tom McLennan, category manager for music at Vodafone. He added: “You need a sizeable base to get the service going and establish credibility against iTunes.”

Voxtone offers Live voiceover customizable ringtones

VoXTone have developed the first ever real live voiceover customizable ringtone.

A ringtone that speaks anything you want combined with a pre-alert sound. It’s an actual human voice that says your name, no robots or robotic sounding voices, its real people who will say your names as natural as possible professional.

The best part of it is, they are not just any real people, but rather real voiceover professionals who do voiceovers for movies, film, commercials, and more.

We will soon be also getting popular musical artists to say the first 200 orders during certain promos that will be coming up soon.

Sprint to offer Pandora streaming radio

Sprint Nextel Corp. has teamed with Pandora, a popular online music service, to deliver personalized streaming radio to its mobile phone users. The Associated Press reports.

"Pandora is a free Internet-based radio service that lets people create stations based on their favorite artists and other songs it finds that match in style.

The music service has attracted 6.9 million users since launching in November 2005 and was recently banned, along with a dozen other popular media Web sites, such as YouTube and MySpace, from the Defense Department's computer system because of network bandwidth concerns.

Pandora's Internet radio service now will be available beyond computers — on Sprint beginning Wednesday. It will be free for the first 30 days of use but will cost an additional $2.99 per month with a Sprint data plan. The service will work initially on five phone models but will expand to all high-speed data phones sold by Sprint by the end of June, the company said.

Ringtones that calm crying babies

GearFuse writes that The Japan Acoustic Laboratory have recently started selling ringtones online that calm crying babies.

Other therapeutic ringtones:

-- Mozart ringtones to relieve hayfever and stiff shoulders - muPass have teamed up with Dr Wago to launch a new range of therapeutic ringtones for their standard ringtone service.

-- Pherotones are ringtones with names like Testeroni or El Cuddlero that claim to make you irresistible to the opposite sex.

-- Samsung launched Phone which generated alpha waves that are supposed to enhances memory and concentration.

-- A member of the Aum Shinrikyo cult launched (very successfully) a ringtone which claimed to make a women's breasts grow larger - just by listening to it

Verizon launches song identification service

Verizon Wireless announced V Cast Song ID, a new service enabling subscribers to identify a piece of music by capturing a 10-second sample via mobile handset and seconds later receiving title and artist information as well as corresponding download, ringtone and ringback offers.

According to Verizon, the service can identify more than four million songs from across genres and decades. [via FierceMobile Content]

Related links to other music recognition services

Parasites offer ringtones to cash in on family pain

According to the Daily Express, a series of websites based in California have been registered with similar addresses but different spellings of Madeleine, advertising ringtones and online casinos.

Madeleine McCann is a four-yearl British girl who disappeared while on holiday with her parents in southern Portugal and her search has gained world-wide sympathy attention and attention.

Every time a user logs on, even if by mistake, the owners of the site receive money from advertisers.

Related: - SMS campaigns to help fund search for Missing Madeleine

Infospace Responds To EMI’s $100 Million Ringtones Lawsuit

The publishing arm of music label EMI has filed a $100 million lawsuit against Infospace earlier this year, writes MocoNews, alleging that the company and its subsidiaries have been underpaying royalties and selling ringtones for songs to which they hold no licensing rights.

"Infospace has now filed a brief with the court, denying most of the claims from EMI."

US Copyright Office Gives Go-Ahead To Ringtone Licensing

The US Copyright Office has issued a decision (pdf) ruling that ringtones that are excerpts of longer musical works or that are taken from existing sound may be considered original musical works in and of themselves, reports mondaq.

"Ringtones that are merely excerpts of a preexisting sound recording fall squarely within the scope of the statutory license, whereas those that contain additional material may actually be considered original derivative works and therefore outside the scope of the Section 115 license.

We also conclude that if a newly created ringtone is considered a derivative work, and the work has been first distributed with the authorization of the copyright owner, then any person may use the statutory license to make and distribute the musical work in the ringtone. "

Amazon to Sell Music Without Copy Protection

Amazon.com, the biggest online seller of CDs, is joining the movement against copy-protection software for digital music. It plans to sell songs that can be freely copied to any computer, cellphone or music player, including the iPod from Apple. [via the NY Times]

Napster says music cell phones will save company

Napster is positioning itself to become the leading content provider for music-enabled cell phones, CEO William Gorog said in a conference call after the close of Wednesday’s trading. Smallcap Investor reports.

“We have never had greater excitement,” Gorog said on the call. “We believe our base of on-demand music subscribers is greater than all other on-demand subscription services combined.”

“In 2008, music-enabled cell phones will easily eclipse sales of MP3 players,” Gorog said. “In the near future, most consumers will own a portable device that is compatible with Napster.”

Virgin Launches Music Mag

Just launched, Headliner gives Virgin Mobile customers on demand access to a full range of music-related content including up-to-date artist news, charts, concert dates and interactive search and community features. [via Unstrung]

"This unique and personal downloadable mobile application delivers a database of thousands of artists and bands from every music genre, upcoming concert tour dates, music festival coverage, and albums and shows directly to the mobile phone. "

Study. Peeling the Orange

Mobile phone company Orange will today publish its first ever digital media index, looking at the activities of its 15 million UK customers. And related to ringtones:

"The youth end of the market seems more taken with downloading songs onto their phones, with over a 250,000 music tracks, ringtones and music videos downloaded every month.

Most downloads happen in the late afternoon and over the weekend, suggesting the majority of users are kids who have just got out of school or bored workers stuck in their offices watching the clock."

[via The Guardian]

Myxertones

MyxerTones lets users make, share or sell ringtones. [via P2P]

With a free artist account, subscribers can:

-- Create ringtones and wallpapers from existing song or image files using our online tools.

-- Generate MyxerTag for their web site, blog, or MySpace page

-- Earn money every time someone buys ter original content. You set the price - or you can choose to give them away for free.

-- Share and sell ringtones with fans directly from the stage using MyxerCodes.

Alltel Wireless announces Jump Music

Alltel Wireless launches Jump Music, letting customers turn their phones into portable music players. Gadgetell reports.

Jump Music will allow customers to transfer compatible music from their computers to their phone with free and easy to use software.

The Jump Music application currently will work only on a PC and will be initially compatible with only five phones: LG AX8600, MOTOKRZR K1m, MOTORAZR V3m, Samsung u520 and the Wafer by Samsung.

The Jump Music software on the PC will allow users to find, manage and transfer music files with a simple click."

McCartney's music goes mobile in Japan

According to Monsters&Critics, Paul McCartney`s music will be available via mobile phone in Japan.

"Universal Music Japan will release a master ringtone version of the single "Dance Tonight" on May 10.

All the other tracks from McCartney`s new album, 'Memory Almost Full' will be released as master ringtones and mobile-based full-song downloads (including "Dance Tonight") on June 6, the same day as the physical CD`s release.

'Memory Almost Full' is the first album to be released by the former Beatle under his recently-signed deal with the Hear Music label".

Verizon removes Akon ringtones

Verizon recently announced that it will sever all ties with Senegalese R&B singer Akon, two weeks after a video surfaced of Akon simulating sex on stage with a 15-year-old girl.

Verizon has since removed Akon's ringtones, music and artwork from his platinum-selling album Konvicted from Verizon Wireless stores and handsets. [via Hot Press]

Magic Ringtone for your home phone

The Magic Ringtone MP3 ringer gives you the ability to use any MP3 file as your incoming ring on your home phone.

Load your favorite song and you’ll hear it every time someone calls. The songs can be loaded from your computer using the supplied USB cable; so you can change the song as often as you like! Any MP3 file will work, so you can use sound bites from movies, recordings of your kids or anything else you can imagine.

[via The Red Ferret]

NZ's music bubble goes pop

Australasian Performing Right Association (APRA) figures suggest mobile phones, both in ringtones and music downloads, now contribute about 16% of revenue for owners of mechanical copyrights - rights to recorded music. That's up from zero a couple of years ago.

[via Stuff]

Filter Your Mobile Music

Currently in Beta, The Filter can be downloaded to your PC and used to fill your mobile phone by building playlists from your MP3/AAC files.

Users simply select a song, and the software will create a playlist of related songs, while users can then thematically browse their library rather than having to scroll through dozens or even hundreds of tunes. [via Mobile Crunch]

Cell Phone with Surround Sound

A cell phone with surround sound? [via Engadget]

T-Mobile UK Launches Music Download Site

T-Mobile and independent music download site ARTISTdirect will work together to launch a new UK music download service, featuring a comprehensive listing of global music artists and genres as well as news, commentary and features. [via digital-lifestyles]

"... There’ll also be loads of exclusive T-Mobile content and features available, including detailed artist information, news about upcoming bands, tickets and video picks."

Listen To Streaming Music On your Phone

Listen to thousands of Streaming Internet Radio Stations on your Mobile Phones, Pocket PC and PDA devices, thanks to mundu radio.

All you have to do is download the free mundu radio application software for your phone and start listening. [Techecho via digg]