Richard Leggett on New Media

No one can really doubt the success of MTV up until now. People like music videos. But I'm left confused when I look at music videos being sold for download on mobile devices such as phones and iPods, and sold at a premium.

Watching music videos on TV is something I only do if I'm doing something else at the same time and just want some background (I don't say background "noise" because I think it's safe enough to say many people now look for background sound and video at the same time, strange as it may sound). As for actually spending money and downloading a music video to my phone or iPod, with those tiny little screens and in the case of mobile phones, horrible sound quality- is surely the worst possible way you could watch a music video?

It makes sense for content providers to pick music videos to test the waters of mobile download services because even though what you are getting might be considered pretty cheap and nasty, you get around that because the band itself adds value to the proposition through association. The content itself is not really all that much better (and often not as practical) as an mp3, after all, pretty much all of these music videos have had the visuals made for the music, not the other way around. This is all subjective of course.

How popular are the sales of these things? Are they just a stop-gap until some (dare I say) "real" content is available. Many products are showing that there is a market for a variety of quality commercial/free content when the downloads are both paid and free (iTunes in the U.S. has movies and TV shows and Joost has free content everywhere, to name two such entities). In particular I'm enjoying the "iTunes U" offerings, which include free university lectures in video format. I'm of the opinion that music videos will see a serious plummet in popularity as these other types of content become more accessible, but as always, I could be proven wrong; but the way things are heading, having to pay to see them will certainly disappear as with almost all downloaded content, with movies being the last to topple. iTunes claimed back in Q3 of 2006 that it had seen 35 million music video downloads... are you one of these people?... did you feel a little bit ripped off or satisfied?

I haven't even touched on the cross-over areas of content here, namely trailers and user generated content. I think both of these have more merit and monetary value when it comes to paid downloads. Trailers serve the dual purpose of entertaining and also letting you know if you want to spend more money (and more importantly, time) on going to see a movie, and user generated content is often perfectly designed to entertain for those few seconds. They are also pretty well suited to share with others in social situations.

So what's the deal with download content for mobile devices? Have we just been testing the water and the purse-strings of those early adopters, or is there a future in music video downloads?

Please feel free to leave votes for or against music videos on mobile devices, and any comments you have on the topic.