Universal Music Group will be mobilizing the Web sites of its artists to expand its direct-to-consumer offerings and bring a new level of service to mobile music fans.

For a 360-degree experience, UMG will also use text messaging to provide music lovers with SMS alerts whenever favorite artists are in town. Through this initiative, UMG hopes to offer fans the richest music experience across a diverse spectrum of devices and platforms.

"Mobile continues to be a very important growth area for UMG," said David Ring, executive vice president of business development and business affairs for UMG?s eLabs. "By addressing needs specific to the mobile community (consumers, devices and services), UMG continues to bring artists and fans closer together while creating real value in the process."  

The company is partnering with Netbiscuits for the initiative.

UMG will leverage Netbiscuits' B2B Web software platform to launch mobile Web sites and services for chart-topping artists.

Through these artist-branded mobile Web sites, UMG will offer fans the ability to interact with one another and to make purchases directly from their handset.

Based on the mobile Web sites, Netbiscuits enables UMG to set up smart hybrid applications for all major platforms, including the iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile devices.

?Universal faces some unique challenges simply because they represent so many of the world?s leading music artists,? said Ran Farmer, managing director of Netbiscuits, Reston, VA. ?They need to be able to deliver premium quality mobile programs for hundreds of different artists, and they have to do that efficiently.?

UMG first began working with Netbiscuits in November, when they collaborated on the successful launch of the mobile Web site for superstar rockers Bon Jovi (http://m.bonjovi.com).

Netbiscuits delivers any rich media content optimized for more than 6,000 different mobile devices worldwide.

The platform enables a next generation user experience on the latest smart phones and provides optimized Web content also for the long tail of Web-enabled phones.

?[UMG] artists want to be mobile immediately, but they also want to have sophisticated features and a customized look and feel,? Mr. Farmer said. ?Another layer of complication is that the mobile Internet is developing so quickly that the solution has to be future-proof to support the things that will be hot tomorrow. 

?We?re proud that Universal chose Netibscuits for this because it says a lot about our platform,? he said.