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Orange runs ad-funded music trial
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24 Mar 08
Country: UK
Region: Europe
Topics: Music and audio
Source:
Online Services/Intelligence/Mobile/Updates
Orange has launched the UK's largest ad-funded content trial with 800,000 of its 15.6m subscribers. Triallists selected from those that had previously downloaded music from the Orange Music Store are split into three groups: those offered tracks for free, those offered tracks at half price (49p) and those at full price (99p). All will be required to view advertisements as they download the tracks and prices are fixed such that there is no pricing advantage to the number of advertisements watched. 500 tracks will be made available for the three month trial. These will cover four different genres (pop, urban, rock and dance) and are from Warner Music Group's back catalogue. Mobile ad company ScreenTonic is managing and delivering the advertisements for the trial and has already signed Paramount Pictures and Ford up to the service. The trial is initially set to run with music, but the company intends to run similar trials with other mobile content such as games. Our take...
Orange was the first European mobile operator to offer DRM-free music downloads in January 2007 and is seeking to further drive the uptake and usage of mobile music as a result of this trial. Given the high cost of the mobile music services and subsequent competition from cheaper online services, subsidising the cost of the music using advertisements seems a logical step. It will be interesting to see whether triallists are willing to view advertisements in return for cheaper downloads and how much cheaper these need to be to compensate for the advertising.
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