Korea's Mobile Music Market Heating Up

TheKoreaHerald: According to industry figures, about 80 percent of the mobile-phone models marketed in Korea are integrated with built-in music players and Korean mobile carriers expect to sell about 10 million MP3 player-equipped phones this year - which is about five times more than the number of stand-alone music players expected to be sold.

SK Telecom Co. (Korea's biggest mobile-phone operator) has stated that mobile data and wireless Internet services now account for about 40 percent of its revenue. What's interesting is that their business model's usage of DRM is based on renewing song lists each month for a monthly fixed-rate of 5,000 won. This gives customers unlimited access to the 700,000 songs on Melon's digital-music service database to play on their electronic devices for each month they're paid up...Kind of a different approach, but I like it...

The article reports that KT Freetel Co., the country's second-largest mobile carrier, unveiled its digital music portal Dosirak last month, allowing subscribers to download music files to their mobile phones, MP3 players and desktop computers. Also, LG Telecom Ltd., the smallest of Korea's three mobile carriers, unleashed its digital music portal Music-On last year and in a marketing gimmick, is giving subscribers a six-month trial period until June, allowing them to download music files for free...