Orange, the mobile network provider has just launched its latest innovation – Monkey Music Player. Following the recent tradition of its animal themed price plans, Monkey provides Orange customers with 300 free texts (minimum) and music downloads every time a minimum of £10 credit is purchased, more with more credit.
“Monkey customers can access the service on their phones by dialling 247. Customers are presented with a choice of 8 pre-set play lists e.g. R&B, Rock, Pop, Chart and playlists from 4Music. These will be refreshed regularly”
The product has been launched in conjunction with Channel 4 (4Music) and Universal Music. Over half a million tracks from the Universal Music label have been made available with no exclusions. Orange customers will have access to exclusive playlists and content.
Target Audience
The beauty of this product is that it has its target audience at it’s core. Younger mobile users like music, can’t always afford expensive phones and like to share via technology. The Monkey music product provides all of this and I predict will see a huge uptake.
I couldn’t demo the online version of the Monkey Music Player as it was not working. Connor of Orange demo’s it here:
PAYG Only?
There are only a couple of gripes I have about this wonderfully positioned product. The first relates to the fact that it is only available to PAYG customers. Why put so much effort into the product and promotion of this to then limit the use of it. I am an Orange pay monthly customer and would possibly use this if it was available.
Secondly the sound quality. I have only heard it through the video posted on the Orange site, but the quality did not sound that great. It uses the voice network rather than internet connection. Facsimile music anyone?
Bus Music
Oh and also I get annoyed enough as it is with little oiks playing their music loudly on the bus for all to hear. I hope this doesn’t mean i’ll be forced to listen to more N Dubz or Hanson or what ever it is the youth of today are listening to…
Great idea though. Great product and it’s the proposition of sharing music by text or online that will possibly strike a chord (aha) with the younger audience. With it being available on handsets from £9.99 and upwards, pack your earmuffs for any bus journeys you have planned.
Why Kings of Leon? Not because they’re a great band (they are) but because they seem to be doing good things in the social media space…
Facebook
A few weeks ago I saw a post by the band (when I say the band I mean their label’s PR/Advertising/Social media agency). This post was a call to action to their Facebook fans to go out and vote them to the top of the VH1 Top 20.
Now I don’t know whether this worked or not but I do know that over 6000 people ‘liked’ this statement, indicating that a large amount of fans went on and voted for KOL.
Twitter
Looking for Kings of Leon on Twitter presents many unofficial profiles. The profile with the highest number of followers does not look official. There’s no link to a website for a start. It appears to be a list of any sites/blogs mentioning KOL.
So Kings of Leon need to get themselves an official Twitter profile. The unofficial one already has 37,000 followers so they’d better get a move on.
Now Kings of Leon’s management may simply have decided that Twitter is not the best social media channel for them. After all it’s populated by us ‘oldies’ rather than the flippant, peer led, pocket money generation.
Which is probably why they have a good presence on…
Bebo
This is a well organised and designed Bebo page. Over 168,00 fans and links to merchandise, albums and the blog. There is also, of course a link to iTunes allowing fans to purchase tracks should they wish. The comments section shows active participation by fans with regular posts.
And best of all IMHO is the ‘Official’ badge on the Bebo profile letting me know that this is indeed the official page. The Twitter profile could do with having a ‘Verified’ badge on it (if/when they set one up).
YouTube
The Kings of Leon YouTube channel is lacking the branding of the Bebo page. Considering a YouTube channel can be customised with any background or theme, the background on this doesn’t quite add up. It’s not consistent with their other social media presence.
Does this matter? Not really. They have had over 2 million channel views and are the number 64 most viewed music artisist on YouTube (I’d have thought they would be higher?)
Open source seems to be the way forward at the moment for large UK organisations. February saw the launch of Guardian Open Platform which allows 3rd parties to utilise their API to create useful applications.
The BBC has now launched their music beta called….BBC Music. The new site aims to be an aggregator of data from both internal sources (BBC) and external sources (Musicbrainz, Wikipedia). The aim? Well their intention appear to be entirely altruistic. To create a hub for music whereby info from across the wide spectrum of BBC sites/microsites is pulled together to create a single, consolidated platform for music. They are also “now publishing several hundred thousand pages automatically, which harvest third-party content from Wikipedia and MusicBrainz” (BBC Internet Blog)
What does this mean for us users?
Well essentially its makes it a whole lot easier to browse artists and to then find out more once you have reached your artist’s page.
Say I like the Arctic Monkeys. I go to BBC Music and use their nifty Flash scroll bar to find them. If they don’t appear then I can just choose to view all artists and locate them alphabetically.
Once I have found my chosen artist I am then presented with a whole host of info about them, both from within the BBC and from external sources:
- Latest news stories (from the BBC)
- Biography (Courtesy of Wikipedia)
- BBC Reviews (A mashup of all reviews from throughout the BBC on this artist)
- Now On The BBC (directs you to where they are currently appearing on BBC Online)
- Played by (Which DJ’s have played that artists music)
- Played on (Which BBC channels have played music by that artist)
Thats a lot of information and great for users of BBC online to be able to find out so much, about so many artists. They are constantly adding new material and acknowledge that the site is very much still in the beta phase.
The one concernI had was that all of this information could be obtain by purely going to an artist’s Myspace? so what was the point? they responded by saying “you’re absolutely right. We know that our users rightly expect an artist page to contain audio – it’s what happens everywhere else on the web, isn’t it? And we’re on the case – there are technology and rights issues to consider here, but we think there’s a way round it. Watch this space.
So could BBC soon be a contender for Myspace? With the API to such a large amount of info being opened up…watch this space!
1) Adverts. I do not want to have to listen to an irelevant advert half way through listening to my favourite tracks. This I feel is an invasion of my privacy. The reason I bought Sky Plus was so that I could begin watching programmes 10 minutes late and then fast forward through adverts. It’s the reason I refuse to listen to commercial, tin pot local radio too.
2) If you’re listening to it in an office or if multiple users are logged in – It stops if anyone else hits play! Rubbish. I don’t like unscheduled interuptions to audio delights…
3) The music choice is disappointing to say the least. Lots of tracks are covers or karaoke tracks. Many artists are not represented at all. If you enjoy new music or niche artists then Spotify is not for you. Having said that, if you like random versions of songs then Spotify is perfect.
4) Its invite only so you have to wait to be invite dto join the fun
5) The music is streamed but is not yet available on mobile devices (although this is coming shortly I am led to believe). So good for static music listening. If it successfully makes the jump to mobile…it will be very very good.
