Alex Kinch

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In the last of a series of articles covering the ‘Where is Payforit Today?’ event (link to part one and part two) the final speaker of the evening was Del Dias, Managing Director at AEI Media – who amongst other things are a content provider customer of Dialogue.

Del gave us an introduction to the company – in a nutshell they have a background in music and entertainment, focussing on drum & bass, dubstep and dance genres. Established in Sheffield in 1996, and working with Dialogue since ‘98, they’ve also produced the top-selling ‘Drum & Bass Arena’ compilation series, and have the number one music-based podcast on iTunes.

Back in the ‘good old days’ of ring tones, AEI looked after mobile content delivery, billing and marketing for some of the biggest names in the music industry, like Warner and Ministry of Sound. Del cited an example of Ministry of Sound – who were converting 30-40% of CD sales into single ring tone purchases – or to put it another way at least a third of people who’d bought one of their compilations for upwards of £13-14 had then gone off and spent a few quid on a single song as a ringtone for their phone.

Unfortunately, Jamster killed the market in 2005 with it’s now infamous ‘Crazy Frog’-driven subscription service – and some would say in turn killed consumer confidence in the mobile industry. Back to 2009 though.. AEI have a ‘dual-download’ (mobile and PC) music store, selling full tracks for 99p – at least that’s the price if you pay by credit or debit card. Del said they were having to charge a premium for customers wishing to charge the transaction to their mobile with Payforit or Web Payforit as the operator charges were such that the already razor-thin profit margin on a single track download was virtually wiped out at 99p.

Their approach was to reluctantly put the price up for Payforit transactions to £1.50 per track – a 50% increase over the cost to the user if they paid by card. The proof is in the stats – and with Payforit only accounting for 3-5% of total transactions in the past eight months, it’s quite possible the higher price is a factor in the apparent reluctance of consumers to pay with their mobiles.

So after all that, is Del a fan of Payforit? “Mobile billing is currently in flux”, he said. “I support Payforit but there are still issues to get over. There is not an immediate solution and time is needed to resolve these matters.

“I also feel that the development process of Payforit has been quite painful and perhaps that is the problem created when competing operators work together on the same project. I am optimistic for the future and for a growth in revenues, but I don’t think these will come solely from mobile, but a convergence of mobile and traditional internet”

For the final word, Del’s tip from the music industry. When asked what the music industry think of Payforit, full track mobile downloads and everything else, he shrugged his shoulders and said “We get so many calls every day from people in the music industry asking ‘can you build an iPhone app? That’s where the money is right now’.

And with that, the presentations were over. My thanks to Dialogue and BCS PR for putting me on the guest list after my 11th hour request, and also a special mention to Andrew Darling of AIME for organising and moderating a sometimes rather noisy event!

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Tagged as aei, mobile content delivery, mobile payments, Payforit + Categorized as Features