The State of Mobile Music

Well, here we are half way through 2008 and it has been a very interesting year already. There's been a real expansion in terms of the number of platforms for mobile music making, and some very interesting new applications as well. So it I thought it might be worth stopping for a moment to think about where we are.

DS Platform
This year we've seen the Korg DS-10 announcement and Groovestep too, although the later have been very quiet for some time now, so I hope they're still going ahead with their app. Of course, both of these were in addition to the wide variety of homebrew apps already available, such as Protein, GlitchDS, and DS Synth, to name a few. What else will come up for the DS platform, and when the DS-10 does arrive how will it be received?

Palm and Windows Mobile
There's not been a huge number of new applications for either platform. However, we have seen SunVox, an amazing cross platform modular application that runs on Palm OS and Windows Mobile. Also, TrakAx, the multimedia tool for Windows Mobile has done great things this year, and of course Intermorphic have announced their new Mixtikl app for windows mobile coming later this year.

iPod Touch and iPhone
Of course the next big thing is the coming of the iPhone and iPod app store and real third party apps on this platform. Already we've seen miniMusic amongst a number of developers aiming at this platform. Will it be a real next step for mobile music?I hope so, but time will tell.

And also ...
Of course, there's more to mobile music than the platforms above. There's been a good deal of new hardware news too, like the release of the Pacemaker DJ device and the announcement of the Korg nano series. Also, there are more platforms on the way, like Google's Android platform, and ALP, and Palm's new Linux based OS too. Who knows what these will bring?

So far?
So good. If you'd asked me in 2006 or early 2007 what the future was for mobile music making I'd probably have said that it was grim at best. Now, I've changed my mind in a big way. I think that for the first time in a number of years mobile music has a real chance to take off, especially with mainstream (and cool) manufacturers like Apple getting in on the act.

So let's hope that the second half of 2008 is even more packed with applications, developments and mobile music making.

Discuss at the Palm Sounds Group ...

tags technorati : Korg, DS-10, Groovestep, Palm, PDA, Mobile Music, iPod Touch, iPhone, SunVox, Mixtikl, TrakAx Mobile