Mobile Music Application Development on the Move

Theta Music Technologies, inc.

Wherever you travel by train in Japan’s major cities, you will see hundreds of people listening to their favorite music on their iPods and other musical devices. While it is widely known that most of the major mobile phone companies sell downloadable music, were you aware that a foreign-run company was one of the first to launch an official music download service on all three major Japanese carriers?

Not only that, but mobile music software production company Theta Music has successfully developed, launched and operated 26 different mobile music services in 13 different countries. The company, says President Steve MYERS, develops music applications for mobile phones, and software that supports music-related content services on mobile phones.

How did the company start? The company’s roots go back to 1998 when Steve created a piece of software that helped people compose music online. He showed the software to his Tokyo-based employer and they succeeded in licensing it to several companies, including Yamaha and NTT-X.

Then they experienced a stroke of good luck – around this time (mid-2000), mobile and ringtones were becoming hugely popular in Japan. Theta Music was contracted by Yamaha and other ringtone providers to develop applications such as mixers, composers and trial-listening players for mobile phones in Japan. After launching services in several other countries, Theta Music span off as an independent company in 2003. Meanwhile in the Japanese market, the company continued to work for other music content providers on the side.

In 2006, Theta Music’s business in Japan took a big step forward when they launched their own chaku-uta service in Japan, first on KDDI, then NTT DoCoMo and SoftBank. “We were the first foreigners to be accepted as an official music provider on any of the three major carriers,” Steve says.

What have been the biggest problems Theta Music has faced? “From 2002 to 2006, we were contracted by Yamaha to develop the back-end systems and software needed to run their mobile music download systems in countries outside Japan,” Steve says. “Because each of these carriers had their own platforms and handsets, there were some tough technical hurdles to overcome, not to mention the challenges of working in different languages and cultures across several different time zones.”

Another huge challenge has been keeping up with the dizzying pace of change in the mobile content industry. New handsets are released constantly, and different types of music content go in and out of fashion very quickly. While the company has ridden the wave of ringtone popularity for several years, they suddenly found themselves scrambling for new work when those sales went into decline in 2006.

“In 2008, we are moving into new territory with the development of several new mobile music games that are designed to train the player in different aspects of musicianship such as ear training, theory, and patterns & instrument visualization,” Steve says. “This is our direction for the future, and we are very excited about the possibilities for these ‘edutainment’ applications, especially in the mobile music sector.”

Theta Music Technologies, inc.
www.thetamusic.com

Text: Jonathon WALSH

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