Mobile music has evolved from simple music apps on early devices like PDAs to a full spectrum of content consumption and creation apps available on iOS devices today. The mobile music market is large with over 25 billion apps downloaded and 600,000 available, though music apps only make up about 4%. Mobile music apps have key characteristics like accessibility, low cost, and ease of use that encourage creativity. While mobile music started as a natural evolution from desktop tools, the presenter argues it now represents an opportunity for more innovative approaches that take advantage of mobility and new forms of music discovery, collaboration, and games-based creation.

1. Mobile Music
Ashley Elsdon


2.  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?

3. Background
 Palm Sounds (2006 – 2012)
 Mobile Music
 PDAs
 Gaming Handhelds
 Circuit bending
 Bespoke devices
 Today we’ll just focus on iOS

4. What is mobile music?
 What is it
 Why is it important
 What does it mean
 Where is it going

5. What is Mobile Music: Pre-iOS
 Listening / Consuming music
 Creating Music

6. What is Mobile Music: iOS
A spectrum of mobile music:
Content Consumption to Content Creation
Consume
Music
Adapt
Music
Create
Music

7. 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

8. Why make mobile music?
 What are the drivers?
 Time
 Costs
 Physical space
 Creative outlet
 Who is making mobile music?

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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?

13. Some synths

14. Drum machines

15. Mutli-track recording

16. Innovation in the interface

17. 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?

18. Evolution is a missed opportunity
• If mobile music is simply a progression of desktop digital music
then we’ve missed a significant opportunity
Consume
Discovery
Collaborative
Listening
Music in
games
Masic as a
game
Casual
creation
Complex
creation

19. 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

20. 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