Mobile Phones to Dominate Digital Music

Mobile Phones will soon become the primary means of discovery and distribution for digital music. The market penetration for mobile phones already far outstrips that of music players. “You’re still going to see millions of iPods sold,” Resnikoff says. “It’s a great item. It’s not going to go away. But the move is toward the iPhone and more diversified devices, more complicated systems. That’s where the battle really starts to heat up.”
Mobile phones are a radio-killing app, making the Web’s entire panoply of music fully portable. While music players are great repositories for music you already own, they aren’t gateways to what you might want to discover. To learn about new artists, many now look to online entities where they once spun the radio dial.
With personalized streams, shared playlists, and huge catalogs of music within arm’s reach, the mobile phone’s access to social networking sites, Internet radio, and subscription services threatens to revolutionize the idea of “broadcasting.” Using cellphones as their portals, online music companies can specifically target the techno-savvy, tastemaking under-35 demographic radio has left behind and offer programs tailored to personal tastes.