First UK single released exclusively on mobiles

Planet Funk's UK single will be available exclusively to 3's 3.5 million UK customers

Planet Funk will release its debut UK single on the 3 mobile phone network, following its success with a release on 3's sister music service in Italy. 

The single Stop Me will be released on 8 May and will be available exclusively to 3's 3.5 million UK customers, rather than being sold in traditional retail outlets.

The mobile operator said that its audio service averages sales of more than 200,000 tracks per month.

The Official Charts Company, which is responsible for compiling the UK music charts, clocked 3 as handling over 53 per cent of mobile track downloads since the start of 2006. 

However, Planet Funk's success may be hampered by 3's small share of the music charts.

The company's figures show that its audio sales currently account for 3.7 per cent of the combined singles chart and 7.5 per cent of the download chart this year.

3 pointed to the success of bands such as Nizlopi and the Arctic Monkeys, which topped the charts after building up their presence online in blogs, as proof that artists are adopting modern technology to break their music. 

"This breakthrough follows the trend of bands using new media such as the internet to build a fanbase before 'coming from nowhere' to top the charts," said 3 in a statement.

Alex Neri of Planet Funk added: "People's musical habits are changing and millions of people now effectively have a record shop in their pocket 24 hours a day."

However, new research from analyst firm In-Stat has suggested that barely one in 10 consumers is interested in multimedia bells and whistles on their mobile phones. 

Neri pointed to 3's audience as an exception to this rule. "We know that 3's customers are huge music fans, and releasing Stop Me solely on their network opens up our music to a whole new audience of over 3.5 million people in the UK," he said.

3's dual-download service allows buyers to download the full-length audio track to both their mobile and PC with a single purchase costing £0.99. 

Last week saw Gnarls Barkley's single Crazy take the record for the first UK number one based solely on download sales.