Mobile tickets in Canada by Live Nation

Rogers Wireless, Canada’s top cell phone company, recently announced an exclusive partnership with Live Nation to bring mobile ticketing to concerts in Canada. Rogers Wireless allows users with cell phones that support WAP 2.0 browsers to enter credit card information and purchase tickets through their phones anywhere within the country. After a successful purchase, the tickets will be sent to the purchaser via SMS and MMS. (Ticket News)

Gracenote to Power Next-Generation Music Handsets for LG Electronics

Gracenote, a global leader in embedded technology, enriched content, and data services for digital entertainment solutions, announced it will provide its music services embedded into handsets of LG Electronics. The services include its popular Mobile MusicID® and two other services embedded in handsets for the first time, File ID and Playlist. Together, these services will bring music identification, discovery and navigation to the mobile phone like never before. (PR)

3G iPhone Launch Seen in Second Quarter

Apple is expected to launch a high-speed wireless version of the iPhone in the second quarter and produce as many as 8 million of the devices in the third quarter, according to Bank of America. Apple has said it expects to have sold 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. It said in January that it had sold more than 4 million iPhones since the phone was launched in June. (Internet News)

Nokia Launches New Digital Music Store in Ireland

Nokia Ireland is delighted to announce the arrival of the Nokia Music Store in Ireland - offering access to millions of tracks, from global hits to local artists and giving consumers the real freedom to enjoy music at their fingertips, 24/7. Nokia aims to include more Irish content from up-and-coming and established Irish artists than any other digital music store available in Ireland. (PR)

MTV Networks Delivers 57 Million Mobile Video Streams in a Year

MTV Networks (MTVN), a unit of Viacom, announced that it streamed more than 57 million mobile videos across all its brands and carriers between February 2007 and February 2008, representing 94% growth over the year prior. MTV continues to be the premiere destination for music on mobile, recording 17 million mobile video streams in the past year, approximately half of which were music videos. (PR)

3 UK launches first commercial ad-funded music video service

Mobile operator 3 UK today announced the launch of the first ad supported, commercial mobile music video service in conjunction with Sony BMG Music Entertainment (UK). The service, powered by Rhythm NewMedia, is available to all 3 UK customers and is accessed through 3's music homepage. The new Sony BMG video collection is the latest addition to 3's existing free mobile video service. The service is offered to customers with no data charges and is supported by short, targeted video ads. (PR)

Nokia confident of music deals

Nokia is increasingly confident of securing deals with the world's leading record companies ahead of launching its flagship music service for mobile phones later this year. In December, Nokia announced plans for its Comes With Music service, under which people will be able to buy mobiles giving them access to Universal Music's entire back catalogue for up to one year. Nokia is in talks with the other three leading record companies - Sony BMG, EMI and Warner Music - plus about 10 independent music labels about giving people access to their catalogues. (Financial Times)

BMI Eyes Ringback Tones For Mobile Growth

BMI expects ringback tones to lead the way in mobile music growth this year as ringtone revenues begin to decline. The company projects ringback tones will exceed $210 million in U.S. sales in 2008, a 50% increase over 2007 estimated sales of $140 million. (Billboard)

Analyst: 50 percent of phones will play music by 2011

More than 500 million music phones were shipped worldwide in 2007, which puts that category of device 300 million units ahead of regular old portable music players, according to the report released Monday by MultiMedia Intelligence. The company is forecasting that by 2011, of the 941 million handsets that will ship worldwide, more than half will be music phones. (News.com)

Celestial Jukebox Arrives, But Is It Any Good?

British cellphone carriers are starting to let users enjoy unlimited over-the-air music downloads, and similar services could hit the United States this year. To find out what it will be like when such a service finally rolls out stateside, Wired.com nabbed the only Omnifone MusicStation-equipped review unit given to a U.S. publication. We tested the British version of the service in an expensive roaming configuration -- still the only way to experience it in the states -- to get a taste of the all-you-can-eat music phone. (Wired)

Orange Announces Ad-Funded Content Trial For 800,000 Mobile Users In The UK

Orange announced the launch of a new advertisement-supported content trial on its mobile internet platform, Orange World. The move will see 800,000 of Orange’s 15.6 million mobile customers given the option to download a variety of music content, from four different genres (Urban, Pop, Rock, Dance) to their mobile handsets for free, or a discounted rate, making it the largest trial of its kind in the UK. (PR)

EMI Aims To Join Nokia's Music Offering

EMI said on Wednesday it was in talks with mobile handset maker Nokia to offer its songs as part of Nokia's new "Comes with Music" offering. Nokia is set to start selling phones under its "Comes With Music" brand in the second half of 2008, offering unlimited access to millions of songs. The world's largest music label, Universal, signed up for the program last December. (Reuters, Billboard)

Madonna to launch 'Hard Candy' on mobile

Madonna plans to give more than 250m Vodafone customers access to her new album ahead of its official release set for April 28th with Warner Music. Beginning on April 21st, each track will remain live and exclusive to Vodafone customers for 24 hours for download before being replaced by the next one. (The Telegraph)

Report: iPhone Users Consume More Content

M:Metrics has released data that shows iPhone users also listen to music, access social networking sites, watch on-demand video and mobile TV, and access news and other information far more than both other mobile phone owners, including other smartphone users. For instance, 74.1% of all iPhone users report listening to music on their phone, compared to 27.9% of smartphone users and 6.7% of overall mobile users. (Billboard)

EU backs Nokia standard for mobile TV

The European Commission moved to simplify the nascent mobile phone TV sector by adopting a standard backed by Finland's Nokia, but mobile operators said Brussels was acting too quickly. DVB-H is the only standard with a global presence although South Korea, Japan, the United States and China are embracing local rivals. Some EU member states, such as Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, had been opposed to setting DVB-H as the single standard in the bloc. But the EU executive said on Monday it was the one most widely used in Europe and is between trials and commercial launch in 16 countries. (Reuters, PR)

How Apple Will Sell 10 Million iPhones

Despite some recent doubts, Apple should meet its goal of selling 10 million phones in 2008. Despite a slowing U.S. economy, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs is sticking to his audacious goal of grabbing 1% of the worldwide mobile phone market by the end of 2008. On Jan. 15, Apple said it had sold 4 million iPhones since it went on sale June 29. That amounts to about 19,900 a day. To hit Jobs' goal, Apple will have to pick up the pace, selling 27,322 handsets a day, seven days a week, for all of 2008. (Forbes)

Napster and Telefonica's O2 link up to offer 5 mln tracks

Telefonica unit O2 has signed a deal with online music site Napster (NASDAQ:NAPS) that gives the mobile operator's subscribers access to 5 mln tracks for download to both the phone and PC, according to The Independent. (Thomson Financial, The Independent)

Colombia's First Digital Music Store Launches

Colombia's first foray into digital music sales comes via a mobile company. The country's first digital music store, Comcel Ideas Music Store, was launched by carrier Comcel, and allows full track downloads of songs via cellphones. Without additional cost, users can download a copy to their computers or vice versa. (Billboard)

Are Carriers Crushing US-Based Mobile Music?

The US-based mobile media market has always been a giant step behind its European - and especially Asian - counterparts. But what is stunting growth in the stateside market? Americans have the disposable income to purchase mobile media assets, just like they have the money to purchase expensive iPhones, subscribe to high-end wireless plans, and barrel though endless text messages. That introduces the question of whether carriers are killing an early-stage media market by imposing heavy percentage demands. (Digital Music News)

Puretracks Announces New DRM-Free Mobile Music Store for BlackBerry

Toronto-based Puretracks, a leading North American digital music provider that partners with Universal, Sony BMG, Warner, EMI, and independent labels worldwide, has developed a new DRM-free mobile music store and service for BlackBerry smartphones from Research In Motion (RIM). It is a next-evolution digital music service developed exclusively for wireless handsets using compressed DRM-free AAC/AAC+ file formats. (PR)