Vodafone’s Music live! with Musiwave
Rating: Improvement …. But is it enough?
Is personalisation the key to mobile search and discovery or is it searching via genre or artist? Vodafone has announced that Musiwave will power its live music searches in order to offer a simpler unified mobile experience.
Musiwave will add value to live! by remembering consumer preferences and music tastes in order to focus the search criteria and make it relevant. This in turn will allow users to browse a number of similar tracks, wallpapers or other merchandise by the same artist at the same time.
Recommendation is essential for the growth and success of the mobile search experience. But it is not clear if Musiwave’s services will go far enough into adding value to the premise of music search. The offer will recommend similar songs from the same artist but the “real” way in which to enhance the UI and make customers discover is by introducing mobile users to new genres or unheard of artists.
There is a fine line between search and discovery. Vodafone live! already has a wealth of content available that users can’t find. So any measures to simplify search is a bonus. But does it go quite far enough?
Musiwave is toying with recommendation and personalisation but this is a far cry from an Amazon style service touted by Purple Ace and Medio Systems. It’s only a small step for Vodafone.
Press release: www.openwave.com
An analysis of Vodafone live! called Vodafone Dead or Live will be available on November 1, 2006 in the latest edition of the Mobile Search Analyst www.bkimedia.com/magazine
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