Fancy a dance, you txty thing?

Club culture is embracing new technologies as Net and mobile services turn a night out into a multimedia blast,

Last week, 50 metres from this spot, Zoë Ball burst out of a birthday cake. Again it's crammed with 10,000 clubbers, but this time there's a new distraction; overhead, a large screen flashes text messages. In a quieter area of the world's largest club, a Web camera records five lads dancing.

This summer in Ibiza, at the events put on by the Manumission promoters, Orange is offering these interactive services along with mobile phone recharge lockers, free internet access and a text message service with Ibiza news (www. orange.co.uk/ibiza).

"The key thing for Orange in a club is relevancy," says Nick Keegan, campaigns executive at Orange. "The fact that we don't just stick up an advertising logo, that we are providing all these services, means that we fit in very naturally."

Last year more than 10,000 calls were made to the Orange information line. For this second year of partnership with Manumission, the information line is complemented by free text-message updates and an Orange/Manumission website. Among the information exclusive to Orange users is the DJ line-up at Manumission, which is not advertised elsewhere. Once at the Manumission club night, there is the Orange Music Pod on which you can make a 10-second video or take a photograph and e-mail them out, or print a map of the island.

"The music services in Ibiza use all the technologies in the Orange multimedia platform – WAP, the Web, SMS and voice media," Keegan says. "The mobile phone can offer much more than voice-calling now: it's about innovative delivery and valuable services, and it can enhance the clubbing experience. Because of this, a lot of communications companies are trying to get involved with Ibiza. Fortunately, we've got the best partner in Manumission."

When Manumission approached Orange two years ago, the priority was to set up the first internet café on the island. A year later and cyber-browsing is fully available in Ibiza, with cafés in all the main towns. The Ministry of Sound hotel, with Net access and PlayStations in each room, opened at the start of the season.

Meanwhile, BT Cellnet has teamed up with the Ministry of Sound to offer clubbers an information and trivia SMS service (www.ibizatxt.com). And Worldpop's Mobile Ibiza service (www.worldpop.com/ibiza) includes a text message-based promotion that allows Ibiza visitors to enter a leading club for free, every night of the week.

For Manumission, though, the Orange song-recognition service is the next tantalising opportunity. "To be able to tap a song lyric into your mobile, which will then play it back, is one example of what I believe to be a synchronicity between clubbers, music and developing technologies," says Andy McKay, a partner at Manumission. "We see our partnership with Orange in a long-term view – it might work now, but it could be amazing in 10 years' time.

"The club environment has to adapt to technology because of multimedia entertainment; it can't survive by remaining only music-based. At Manumission nights, there is a cabaret, and we see the Orange Music Pod as another ingredient in the Manumission experience."

The Manumission scheme, along with similar initiatives at the summer festivals and the Q Awards, is an opportunity for Orange to explore the delivery of mobile music services withMusic Alchemy, a research department it set up last year. The analyst company Data Monitor estimates that of the $31.5bn (£22bn) revenue to be earned by mobile content by 2005, about $11bn will come from entertainment. Content ideas under consideration by Orange include allowing users to create personal playlists, programme a mobile to receive certain types of music, and buy music and download tracks on the phone.

"The big difference between a mobile music service and, say, a personal stereo is that you will be able to access music whenever, wherever and however you choose," says Nick Keegan. "It is good for you because it allows access to a vast amount of music, very conveniently, from a trusted source like Orange, with whom you already have a personal, as well as billing, relationship. It is good for the music industry because the music would either be rented or bought through a trusted third party, in this case Orange, with whom the industry has a licensing relationship."

Come next summer your music choice may well be between a week largin' it in Ibiza, hitting the summer festivals, or taking advantage of the choice and services of mobile music in a Dorset field or on the 52 bus. Until then, it's more or less business as usual for the clubbers at Manumission. On the large text screen at Manumission's Privilege night, a new message flashes up: "John, where r u? Meet u by the Day-Glo jewellery stall."