Stopping Piracy – buy a CD – what rubbish!

A recent advertisement I heard on radio was informing people to buy CDs and stop “downloading” over the Internet in an effort to stop piracy.

It seemed innocuous enough. A well intentioned community announcement followed by the eloquent words of an international artiste who offered that downloading over the Internet was killing creativity and instead we should buy a CD, ostensibly so we could “read the cover and really feel it”.

What a load of rubbish! Well the sentiment was there. But just a little lacking in educational benefit for a community announcement. The PR guys writing the script for the artists need to step up to the plate before they get whacked out the park themselves.

The CD is a dated storage device and a very poor strategy against which to fight piracy. It’s big, it breaks, it gets scratched and becomes unplayable, but mostly, it just gets copied easily.

If we really wanted to stop piracy we could. For a start we’d stop making CDs and only allow music to be distributed via digitally rights managed (DRM) downloads for specific devices.

What better way to ensure that a piece of originally produced music was never copied again? When a buyer downloads DRM protected music, that music is usually set for specific platforms or devices (such as a mobile phone, music player or laptop), ensuring it can’t be copied.

Now I’m not saying that the CD should be killed off, although there are better storage methods. What I am saying is that the well intentioned community better get educated, and that downloading from legal sources, especially if you can do it direct from your mobile phone, is a far superior way to fight piracy that buy CDs.

You want to experience it for yourself. Come shop on your mobile or cell phone. Key http://www.THEcellcity.com/ into your phone (or on the web browser) and download the music for your phone today. 100% DRM protected. And if you want the wallpaper of the artist so you can “feel it”, we have them too.

The Mobile Internet – Coming your way

I have to admit that I don’t have the facts and figures available to back this up from a third party perspective, but, I can tell you that 35% of our customers in August are doing their surfing and downloading direct from the mobile phone. That’s an 13% increase over July 2006.

Maybe that’s just a result of our recent media activity and the education getting to the masses.
What I mean by “surfing and downloading direct from a mobile phone” is that these customers are keying in our web address http://www.thecellcity.com/ into the browser on their cell phone, and selecting the product of their choice, downloading and paying for it – all on their cell phone.

And of those who are still browsing the http://www.thecellcity.com/ from their PC, over 50% are now choosing to send the application direct to their phone once they have made their purchase. That’s an increase of over 23% of customers from last month.

There may be a few reasons why Cellcity fairs better than other mobile shopping sites; notably because we decrease the size of many applications so that our customers benefit greatly with faster transfer speed and lower costs to download direct from the cell phone.

But many other reasons bode well for the future. Continued reductions in GPRS charges by mobile telcos will help. The sooner we get these charges lower the better for everyone.
Pervasive WiFi will be another boon to the industry and the convergence of music players with phones, camera phones etc. This will take place as mobile phone and PDA users become more reliant on using one device for a multitude of tasks.

Of course there are problems and we need to deal with these. Website producers have to respect the need for speed and immediate gratification by the end user. No-one wants to wait 10 seconds or worse for a page to load. Mobile websites can’t show all the features you can fit on a 15 inch desktop, so designers need to be a little smarter in how they present information.
Also, manufacturers and chip makers must and will keep improving memory and speed.

My prediction: Mobile internet users will overtake desk-based internet users in 12 months.
Who leads the way? Asia. But I’ll leave that for a later blog.

Shang-haing the Mobile Future

It probably happens to many visitors from western countries who hit places like Shanghai – with population estimates of between 12 and 20 million, this place is capital B I G big. And with a daily visitor population of 4 million – it’s just a good old smack in the face. WOW!

Whichever way you look at it, that’s a whole lot of fried eggs for breakfast on a daily basis. And every other conceivable commodity required in keeping that many people going. Walking the streets, the percentage of mobile users (SMS or calling while walking) is relatively low compared to Singapore or Hong Kong. But in sheer volume terms and growth potential, it dwarfs its fellow Asian cities.

While the Shanghainese definitely still have growing pains (a lot of outages on the Internet and GPRS network while I was there last week), they’re obviously determined to win in no matter what area we talk about.

The mobile opportunity is enormous. The people are turned on, and the Government’s proactive stance to educate and ensure that its citizens benefit from being the world leaders in using and deploying mobile technology, will go a long way to helping them achieve their potential.

There’s an incredible rich vein of talent in all the necessary areas, technological prowess, marketing intelligence and entrepreneurial vision and spirit to succeed.

The Cellcity opens its Chinese language sites and content portals in September at http://www.thecellcity.com/ and http://www.cellcity-china.com/. And Shanghai will be providing a host of content from music, games, information, services, sports and business. We’re looking forward to the partnership, and I’ll keep providing updates as to market information and statistics as we get them.