During an hour-long panel at the CES Mobile Entertainment event today, a host of executives ranging from Pandora to SanDisk and Motorola to Sony Ericsson talked about the mobile music industry with a couple of themes standing out: thoughts on the news yesterday that iTunes will allow full-track music downloads over-the-air for the same price, and whether negotiations with music labels, which can always be tricky, are finally starting to loosen up. The backdrop can be put into context with some numbers Atlantic Records shared earlier in the day. Livia Tortella, GM/ESVP of marketing for Atlantic Records, said that Atlantic was one of the first to achieve a 50-50 split between physical and digital music sales, and of the 50 percent going towards digital, she said the mix breaks down to 69 percent from downloads, 18 percent from subscription, and about 13 percent from mobile.

On music-label negotiations “being like a colonoscopy”: David Thompson, head of content acquisition for Sony (NYSE: SNE) Ericsson: “The labels are realizing that digital is what matters, and since online is saturated, the only new money is in mobile. The labels are much more willing to come to the table and negotiate.” Following the panel, I asked Thompson to explain: “It [mobile] is the new hot spot for them. They’ve done well with Comes With Music from our competitors, like Nokia (NYSE: NOK), and therefore their digital divisions are getting more freedom and attention internally…it is still a tough negotiation on both sides.” Dave Ulmer, senior director, of Motorola’s Entertainment and Multimedia Products & Services, said: “It’s now inevitable to have the conversations, but it’s still a doctor’s examine.” Nokia’s Trevor Madigan says its hard despite their success: “Certainly, when a global company like Nokia tries to cut a deal for something that’s not an established market, it can be easier. But there’s no publishing community that’s integrated, it can be very challenging. We’ve been reasonably successful, but every country requires separate negotiations.”

Reaction to Apple’s iTunes’ announcement: To be sure, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) isn’t the first company to provide 99 cent track downloads over the phone. Sprint (NYSE: S) has had those prices in place for some time. But will Apple be the one to move the market from one primarily focused around side-loading music to one that is over-the-air? No one on the panel seemed impressed. Thompson: “HSPA [3G] will not be the end all-be all solution. The challenge we have right now is coming up with compelling services that give something to the carrier—they want new subscribers, so we have to come up with music services that do not clog up the bandwidth or ensures someone will sign up for a year, or update their data plan.” Ty Roberts, CTO at Gracenote, was also suspect of it changing things dramatically: “It adds a small amount of convenience. There are places where you want something right away, and want immediate gratification, but it’s still small.”

Photo Credit: edans