Based in Chiswick, London, Omnifone specialises in creating music download services for other brands, rather than marketing its services direct to consumers. Its customers include Hewlett-Packard and Sony, whose Music Unlimited service is to be pre-installed on 350m Sony products, including games consoles, smartphones, computers and televisions over the coming years.
Speaking after the BlackBerry announcement, Omnifone chief executive Jeff Hughes said: "By the end of next year, our platform will service, with our partners, more paying subscribers than any other digital music service on the planet."
Hughes said that more deals would be announced before the end of the year and that the company was in discussions with car manufacturers about building a music subscription device into their vehicles' dashboards.
Omnifone is privately owned and will not disclose subscriber numbers, but accounts filed at Companies House show its turnover increased 29% to £4.3m between 2009 and 2010. The company nevertheless made a £15m loss, which includes £6.4m of deferred invoices. Its headcount has grown from 35 people four years ago to nearly 200 this year.
The company was created in 2003 by its chairman, Rob Lewis, a publishing entrepreneur and founder of successful technology news site Silicon.com. As record labels cast about for a digital music revenue model that will replace the millions lost to piracy, a number of music executives have been taking a close interest in Omnifone.
Sony Music's digital business executive vice president Michael Paull is among its directors, and Universal Music Group's digital business chief Rob Wells was a director until earlier this year.
Hughes said: "People who want to launch a service that is global come to us. We are providing the building blocks for other people to create the models they want, but it all runs on the same platform, so there are economies of scale."
Omnifone services currently have fewer subscribers than Spotify, which is believed to be the largest "music rental" business globally, with an estimated 1.7m subscribers in Europe and the United States. But there are signs that the online subscription model, which has so far failed to make a significant contribution to record company profits, is beginning to take off.
The bulk of Spotify's 6 million followers use the service for free, but by placing tighter restrictions on the amount of free music available in May, Spotify added more than 500,000 paying customers in a month. Within months of this summer's US launch, Spotify had an estimated 175,000 subscribers.
Omnifone's deal with BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (Rim) is more restrictive than the Spotify service. The songs will only be playable on a BlackBerry and cannot be transferred to other devices. After a trial period, costing $4.99 a month in the US – a UK price has yet to be announced – users will be able to download 50 songs to their phone, but can share all 50 with other friends on the service, thus building up each others' libraries. Once a month, users will be able to swap 25 of their tracks. "Potentially we will see a big growth in subscription music," said analyst Martin Scott at Analysys Mason. "And if BlackBerry gets the balance right in terms of the price and the product, an online music service could help it to retain its customers."
ABI Research predicts that by the end of 2011 there will be 5.9 million paying subscribers to mobile phone music services globally, increasing to 161 million in the next five years.
View the Original article
0 Response to "BlackBerry Messenger to offer music service"
Post a Comment