https://mobilemusicblog.com/ A history of the mobile-music era, 2004–2010 — the ringtone boom, the carrier stores, the iTunes phone that flopped and the iPhone that ended the argument. Written from period sources. en Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT https://mobilemusicblog.com/april-furst/ https://mobilemusicblog.com/april-furst/ Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT The 'WORLD EXCLUSIVE' iTunes phone published at this address on March 31, 2005 was an April Fools' prank — an iPod rubber-banded to a 1980s brick phone — and Gizmodo, Boing Boing and thirty-one trackbacks took the bait. https://mobilemusicblog.com/why-the-rokr-failed/ https://mobilemusicblog.com/why-the-rokr-failed/ Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT The Motorola ROKR E1 failed because it was a year-old handset capped at 100 songs, priced at $249.99 beside the $199 iPod nano and syncing at USB 1.1 speed. The record, with a checkable source on every failure. https://mobilemusicblog.com/who-killed-the-itunes-phone/ https://mobilemusicblog.com/who-killed-the-itunes-phone/ Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT All three wounded it — Apple with a 100-song cap, Motorola with an old handset shipped late — but the carriers killed the iTunes phone by winning the pricing fight: $1.99–$2.50 a song over the air against Apple's $0.99. https://mobilemusicblog.com/two-songs-a-week/ https://mobilemusicblog.com/two-songs-a-week/ Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT In July 2005 O2 signed Andy Cato of Groove Armada to supply two exclusive, DRM-free tracks a week at £1 each — the furthest any UK carrier went in trying to be a record label. https://mobilemusicblog.com/chaku-uta/ https://mobilemusicblog.com/chaku-uta/ Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:00:00 GMT KDDI's au sold clips of real recordings as ringtones from December 2002 and whole songs over 3G from November 19, 2004 — nearly a year before any US carrier store. The chaku-uta story, with the RIAJ numbers.