MTV and Warner Music have struck a deal yesterday to allow music videos to be downloaded to digital cell subscribers.  The deal will allow Warner Music’s library of videos to be sold and downloaded as video content that can be played back on cell phones and other mobile media gadgets.  MTV already has deals in place to allow certain portions of their content to be downloaded to digital network subscribers but this will be the first time music videos will be part of that downloadable content.  The plan is to focus on Europe and Asia where mobile downloads are already popular.  They expect mobile downloads of digital content to boom in North American next.  Do kids really like to watch and listen to music videos on a cell phones 1.5” TFT display?  We’ll see how popular it really is but downloadable music files are already taking off outside North America. 

It's an interesting story that Warner would do anything that might advance digital distribution rather than fighting it.  Warner Music CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr had been at war with the whole downloadable music business model.  Could it be the music establishment is finally seeing the light?  As recently as a week ago Bronfman and Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs have been battling a war of words over the issue of musical content downloads through Apple’s iTunes.  Bronfman believes iTunes undersells their content that goes for a dollar a song.  Jobs says Bronfman is just being greedy.  The dollar per-song download paradigm is a brilliant vehicle for iTunes to adopt.  Only on CD were we forced to buy an entire 15 songs why not give customers the flexibility of downloading only the songs they want?  Bronfman was quoted as saying:  “We are the arms supplier in the device wars between Samsung, Sony, Apple and others.”  Now it seems Bronfman is trying to work his own deals for downloadable content.