Mobile music will make up almost 30 percent of global retail music value by 2011—around $11 billion, according to UK analysts Understanding & Solutions. The company said that Japan has the most effiicent mobile music market, closely followed by the USA—both countries have a concentrated operator base and a large pool of potential subscribers. In emerging markets mobile could be the number one platform for music because CDs haven’t gained traction because of lack of hardware ownership and piracy claims the analyst—although if people don’t have hardware how are they listening to the pirated music? Still, mobile is likely to be the main device for digital content in emerging markets, and it makes sense that would include music—the handsets are getting better, and as each feature becomes more commoditized it will become more ubiquitous. (PDF release)