Mobile music gets a boost

Several music labels and Monstermob, the mobile ringtone and content company, are launching new music downloading services this week, following a decision by Vodafone to waive the data charge for full track music downloads.

Previously, operators have not imposed a data charge for downloading songs from their own “walled garden” portals, but users who wanted to download from third parties could pay as much as £7.50 in data charges to download a single, one megabyte song.

Vodafone’s move means its customers won’t pay data charges when they download songs from Ministry of Sound, V2 or Monstermob – they will just pay for the music.

A typical track downloaded to a mobile costs around £1.50. Vodafone’s move is expected to be closely watched – and probably followed - by other operators. It is a wise one as data charges are nonsensical to the user and entirely unrelated to the value of the content they are getting.

Vodafone is expected to charge mobile music sellers a wholesale data rate – thought to be around 30p a megabyte – for tracks downloaded by their customers. So if many more tracks are downloaded, Vodafone could still benefit.