Portio's Digital Music Futures research

If you’re anywhere near music and mobile, this new report from Portio should be on your to-read list.

Link: Portio Research

Following six years of decline from a high of USD$39.7 billion in 2000 to just USD$32.1 billion in 2006, we believe that the value of the global music market is set to reverse and grow again back to USD$38.8 by 2011. In 2006 the major mobile handset manufacturers (Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, LG and others) have been shipping MP3 enabled handsets in some volumes. At the same time, many mobile network operators (MNOs) have started to distribute MP3 enabled phones and launch OTA (over-the-air) music download services (Vodafone, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, Cingular, DoCoMo, SKT, O2, Orange and many more) thus creating a new digital music consumption market.

Worldwide, the mobile services market dwarfs the music industry in revenue terms, and music companies need to be taking a very, very serious look at mobile operators as they may possibly become one of the future’s biggest channels to market.

I really like the concept of Omnifone’s MusicStation — services like that which aim to actually make music on mobile work properly — could really take the market into a different dimension.

Meantime, I am going to continue to take my iPod Shuffle with me when I go out…