Fortune magazine has a write-up of how the mobile music market is cannibalizing its own sales, with new, independent initiatives from Nokia and Sony Ericsson threatening to take mobile music sales away from the carriers' own music services.

"Sony Ericsson and Nokia are blowing caution to the wind - and a raspberry at carriers - because they have little choice," the article said. "Apple invaded their turf by bringing the popular iPhone to Europe in November, along with a business model that sucks music users away from carriers and onto Apple's iTunes service. If the handset makers want to compete against the iPhone, it would help if they had their own music services. That's especially true considering that most mobile music in Europe and the U.S. lands on phones via sideloading (transferring tunes from PCs to handsets)."

The carriers, of course, aren't taking this sitting down--customers be damned. "We do at the moment own the relationship with the customer," said Vodafone senior content-development manager Neil Walker in the article. With an attitude like that, it's all the more reason for handset vendors to shake up the industry in our opinion.

Mobile makers shake up music biz [Fortune]