Orange and UMG launching Monkey unlimited streaming mobile music service
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Orange UK has teamed up with Universal Music Group and Channel 4 to launch a new unlimited mobile music service called Monkey.
However, it’s not downloads like Nokia’s Comes With Music, and it’s not streaming over the network like Spotify. Its 16-24 year-old target demographic will access the music via voice call.
It’s worth digging into the details. Monkey is aimed at the kind of young pay-as-you-go customers who are unlikely to have either an expensive mobile phone or a flat-rate data tariff. Hence the use of IVR as the delivery method.
“We didn’t want the service to be limited to high-end handsets,” Pippa Dunn, director of Pay As You Go at Orange UK tells Music Ally. “You can access this on all handsets, from those costing £9.99 upwards.”
Monkey is free to users, as long as they spend at least £10 a month topping up their phone credit. 300 text messages are bundled in too. Users access Monkey from their phones by dialling 247 and then choosing from eight regularly refreshed pre-set playlists, including R&B, rock, pop and chart songs.
However, there’s also an online version where people will be able to create eight of their own playlists and sign up friends. Once that’s done, they can dial into these customised playlists (and those of their friends) from their phone too.
The first question to ask is how the business model for Monkey will work. “From Universal’s perspective, this is about an acquisition model,” SVP of digital Rob Wells tells Music Ally. “We get a fee per subscriber.”
And Orange? “Our business model is quite simple: we want to take more of the youth [market] share,” says Dunn. That means the emphasis will be on attracting customers from rival operators, although she says existing Orange paygo customers will be able to sign up to Monkey too.
Wouldn’t most 16-24 year-olds prefer Monkey to have a full range of artists available, rather than just those signed to UMG? “For launch, we’re really happy to have Universal on board as a partner, particularly with the exclusive content they’re making available for us,” says Dunn. “We think it’s an incredibly compelling service as it is. For the longer term? We’re keeping an open mind.”
The exclusives she refers to will include pre-release tracks, competitions, artist interviews and playlists. In fact, this isn’t entirely new for UMG: Wells points out the label has a number of similar deals elsewhere in the world.
“We’re working with Bouygues in France and in Singapore with Singtel, and Universal is the exclusive partner in both those deals,” he says. “The number of subscribers with Bouygues is over the two million mark. In our experience, other major labels are not necessary to make this work. It’s about making the service as sexy as possible without the need for consumers to look for other major label repertoire.”
Is Monkey just about streaming music, or is it trying to turn these 16-24 year-olds into buyers? Not exactly – the whole point is that many potential Monkey users aren’t keen on buying music.
However, there is one feature that may stimulate sales. When listening to the mobile version of Monkey, people can press the ‘5’ key to be sent a text with the track name. If it’s available on Orange’s own music store, there’ll be a link to buy – as there will be on the website.
“It’s safe to say we don’t necessarily believe that this target market wants to buy music, they want to stream it,” says Dunn. “That’s the main part of the business model here.”
There is another intriguing part of the business model, though. A sentence midway through the press release mentions that Monkey “delivers great offers from relevant brands direct to their mobile”. Coming in the same week that Orange signed a deal to use the technology of youth-focused ad-supported MVNO Blyk, are these two bits of news linked?
In a word, yes. “We will use the Blyk functionality with this service,” confirms Dunn. “We’re in the process of working out how that manifests itself. But this isn’t the ad-funded model that you might have seen with Blyk.”
You might be wondering how Channel 4 fits into all this. It will be promoting the service on its 4Music digital TV channel, with traditional ads and branded shows. However, 4Music will from September also be responsible for the Monkey website, including its editorial content.
“That’ll be the place to explain Monkey in more detail, and add a bit of editorial textuality to it,” Channel 4’s head of corporate and business development Paul Whitehead tells Music Ally. “We’ll be helping to make it more of an interesting service and a club that people will keep coming back to.”
One element that hasn’t yet been confirmed is whether Monkey users will be able to share their playlists on the website with friends who aren’t using the service – or indeed aren’t even Orange subscribers.
Could the IVR technology used for Monkey be deployed for other streaming mobile music services from Orange aimed at other demographics? Dunn says possibly, but points out that those people may be more focused on owning music.
But what about streaming music over Orange’s data network? With the buzz this week around Spotify’s iPhone application, there’s more talk than ever about streaming music to phones rather than selling downloads. Does that have a big part to play for Orange in the future?
“Unquestionably it’s the way things are moving,” says Dunn, while Wells is more effusive. “Once older generations have shrugged off the burden of ownership, I think subscription and streaming services are the future of what will unlock mass-market consumption, especially on portable devices,” he says.
Monkey goes live tomorrow (30 July). Its website may be live here by the time you read this.
