Drawing Emerging Business Models for the Mobile Music Industry

The plethora of actors, the complexity of relationships and the variety of information and financial flows affecting the mobile entertainment arena today, have created a series of challenging business opportunities for entrepreneurs and key market players. The evolving and quite promising mobile music market, however, is suffering from the luck of integrated theoretical frameworks critical for the business activity acceleration and for the corresponding mobile music services diffusion. In this paper, we advocate the application of a business model change methodology for the purpose of transforming the current business models of the traditional and online music industry to a new business model appropriate for the mobile music industry. To do so, we are based on the results of a qualitative research study, which involved in-depth interviews with content providers, mobile operators and music consumers using semi-structured questionnaires. To that end, the present study applies the available business model theoretical insights to the music industry and depicts the current business practice in terms of: the content delivery channels employed (i.e. traditional, Internet, mobile), the participating actors; and the relative flows. Key business modelling issues are discussed and direct managerial implications to potential players are also provided. Finally, straightforward directions for further research are discussed.