An interesting question was posed in a session called “The Producers” at MECCA this morning: Can you break a band on mobile alone? You have seen bands like the British sensation “The Arctic Monkeys” get signed after having gathered a major following almost exclusively online. Now, can you gather that kind of buzz by marketing a band using just cell phones? The answer is probably.

I’m reporting this week from CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment Conference 2006 in Los Angeles. Today, Monday, is the Billboard MECCA Mobile Entertainment Conference, held at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel in downtown LA. This morning’s highlights included a keynote from Paul Reddick, VP of Business Development, Planning and Strategy at Sprint Nextel on some of the myths of mobile content (such as mobile TV is nothing more than “tiny TV”).

It continued with keyboardist Ray Manzarek of the legendary group The Doors, and the band’s manager Jeff Jampol talking about how they plan to leverage the group’s brand assets on new media platforms. The band lost its notorious lead singer, Jim Morrision, when he passed away in 1971. Jampol claimed that today the Doors brand is an asset worth half a billion dollars and that they now are mining that by doing everything from rewrites of songs featuring Snoop Dogg for videogames to creating a series of ring-back tones for cell phones. Current revenues for the band via the mobile channel, however, are “not significant”, according to Jampol.

The following session on “The Producers” raised the question whether it is now possible to break a band on mobile. No clear answer was given by the panelists. Steve Lerner, CEO of the independent cross-platform record label Wind-up Entertainment, said that they were willing to try, but it might be hard. What do I think? I think that it is already possible. But not in the same way as, for example, on MySpace, where any band can post a number of songs, interact with their listeners by blogging, posting pictures and comments, etc. Mobile is a totally different kind of medium and smart marketers know that. In the same way as a video game can be made into a feature film, I believe that a ring tone or catchy beat can be made into a hit song. We have already seen bands break after their songs have been featured in 30-second advertising spots for some unrelated products on TV. The record labels and the bands themselves just have to be less afraid of losing control and experiment a little more. And finally they are starting to. I just wonder what Jim Morrison would think of his songs being performed by Snoop Dogg in a videogame?