more on mobile music...

this is gonna be a long one, but bear with me...

'been a lot of hoopla in the last week or so about mobile music. don't get me wrong, it's gonna be huge. while there'll always be a market for stand-alone mp3 players - for the most part concentrated at the low end (cheap commodities with limited memory) and high end (10gb+ capacity jukeboxes) -- expect integrated mobile phone/mp3 players to dominate the mid-tier. starting now. in fact, we're already well under way.

fact is, mobile phones with mp3 capability are already well-embedded in the market, dating back to the nokia 3300. indeed, the nokia website lists ~40 mp3 capable phones already out or soon to come ('course not all of those devices are available in all markets) - and that's just from one vender. so, odds are, the average consumer is already mp3 unwired (as it were), but just may not know or might be too intimidated by the technology to make use of the feature.

let's take nokia devices as an example (happens to be what i know best, but this ain't an advertisement). the aggregate embedded base of 6600, 6620, 6630, 6670, 7610 and ngage devices is not a small number. each of these devices - and more to come (and soon) - are built around the open symbian operating system and sport the easy-to-use nokia series 60 user interface...

...and with that sentence alone i may well have just lost pretty much any reader other than the technophile...but wait...

...from a consumer perspective, who cares what the operating system is called or how a vender might label it's implementation? what matters is that these devices either already have an integrated music player or can support one of multiple players being offered online by third parties who have taken advantage of the open nature of the nokia architecture and built their own applications.

where are these third party apps? well, do a google (or whatever) search and you'll find links to multiple downloadable apps. or go to sites like handango or symbiangear (not vouching for anyone, just offering examples) and search for the same. hell (still not vouching for anyone), here's some specific examples: some outfit called viking informatics offers mp3player for symbian phones that features skins, playlist management, etc. some site called lonelycatgames offers ultramp3 with similar features. m-internet offers mp3go. softonic offers mp3gravity. mobile vault offers mp3base 2006. etc. etc.

so you download one of these applications...then what? well, depending on the vender, you may be able to make your purchase online and have the app sent directly to your phone - you get a message which when opened launches installation of the app to the phone. simple. if you've downloaded your app to your pc, it's a different process, but not that huge a deal - really no more complex than transferring mp3s from your pc to whatever stand-alone player you might have or think about purchasing. read on...

first, you need to hook-up your phone to your pc. easiest perhaps if your phone and pc both have bluetooth (increasingly the case), but you can also check your phone vender's website to see if a usb cable is an option - faster than bluetooth, and a connection many already know from their experiences with digital cameras, mp3 players, etc. once you've got your connection, right click on the application file you downloaded to your desktop, select "send to" and then "bluetooth" or usb and then shoot the file to the phone, which launches the installer and away you go...

what about the music? ok. let's figure that the vast body of embedded digital music in the marketplace is in mp3 format. everyone who's ripped cds to a pc has probably ended up with tunes formatted as mp3 files. if your legitimately-acquired files happen to be in some other format there are variety of conversion applications available online. but, in any event, let's just generally assume we're working with mp3 files.

so, again, in the nokia case, if you haven't already done so or lost the cd that came with your phone, you can wander out to the company's website and download a version of "pc suite" for your particular model. pc suite actually lets you do all sorts of things like synchronize your contacts and calendar between your phone and pc, share images, install applications (indeed, you could use pc suite to install your music player app rather than the method described two paras above) etc. - but let's focus on music.

with pc suite running and your phone attached to the pc (see above), you can use pc suite's "transfer files" feature to drag and drop mp3s from whichever folder you've stored them on your pc to whichever destination you want on your phone or its memory card. it's really as simple as that. launch whichever music app you have on the phone, have it search for files and presto, you're golden. your sound quality's likely gonna vary depending on which phone you have, how old it is, which headphones you're using, etc. - but you've got your tunes, on your phone, mobile. go for a jog.

well, ok, not just yet. about the file destination on your phone. resident memory on most embedded symbian devices is perhaps a bit limited from a storage perspective - just enough to store a handful or two of tunes. but, these devices come with/accept memory cards which extend your storage capacity. in the early days, such cards were themselves somewhat limited (in today's terms, that is) - 32mb, 64mb - capable of holding, say, four or five hands full of tunes. but today you can get MMC cards supporting memory of 128mb, or 256mb, or 512mb. 1gb cards are on the way. we're talking storage for 100s of songs, and a bunch of pictures, video clips, etc.

ok. so that's it. and i'm sure that for some following this roadmap might result in potential derailments along the way depending on any individual's unique situation. but, by and large, this oughta work. it's really not rocket science. but, that said, it could probably be a tad bit easier - perhaps not in terms of technology, but, rather, the manner by which the process is communicated to average people who, frankly, may well have never read a blog nor even know what one might be...

later.