Mobile Music Ashley Elsdon

Intro / background

What is mobile music

Why make mobile music?

Where are we now and where is ‘here’?

What does all of this mean

Where next?

Background

Palm Sounds (2006 – 2012)

Mobile Music

PDAs

Gaming Handhelds

Circuit bending

Bespoke devices

Today we’ll just focus on iOS

What is mobile music?

What is it

Why is it important

What does it mean

Where is it going

What is Mobile Music: Pre-iOS

Listening / Consuming music Creating Music

Consume Music

Adapt Music

Create Music

What is Mobile Music: iOS

A spectrum of mobile music:

Content Consumption to Content Creation

What are the characteristics

Key characteristics:

Accessibility

Price

Ease of purchase

Instant

Takes no time to install / load

Takes no little or no time to learn

Democratized / inclusive / immersive

Encourages creativity through play

Music creation as game mechanics

Why make mobile music?

What are the drivers?

Time

Costs

Physical space

Creative outlet

Who is making mobile music?

Where is here? (1)

By the numbers:

Over 25 billion apps downloaded

Around 600,000 apps available in the app store

Around 19,000 new apps submitted per month

Average app price: $2.06

Music apps make up around 4%

Sources: 148Apps.biz

Where is here? (2)

Developers of all sizes

Not just large scale Manufacturers doing well

Multi-national to 1 man band

Creation software in a wide variety of flavours

Synths, Drum Machines, Sequencers, instruments, effects and more

Encouraged by Apple

Core MIDI framework introduced

So, how did we get here?

App store went live in July 2008

Early music apps were simple

Constant development of the platform

Constant development of the hardware

What does it mean?

Is it a fad?

Are these applications just toys?

Isn’t this just a natural evolution from desktop hardware to mobile hardware and touch interfaces?

Some synths

Drum machines

Mutli-track recording

Innovation in the interface

This is what it means

It isn’t a fad, 4 years is too long

Not toys any more, apps can be very complex

An evolution of the desktop?

Evolution is a missed opportunity

Consume DiscoveryCollaborative

ListeningMusic in games

Masic as a game

Casual creation

Complex creation

• If mobile music is simply a progression of desktop digital music then we’ve missed a significant opportunity

Innovation

We need to overcome the temptation to replicate the desktop

What would it be like if there were no desktop digital tools?

Mobile music creation needs to take more advantage of factors like mobility and location

Think inside the box as well as outside

To finish

Mobile music creation is still in it’s infancy

There’s a huge opportunity to shape the market

Untapped creativity = untapped market

An incremental shift isn’t necessarily an innovative one

A radical shift in music creation is risky, but should be balanced against the potential opportunity