Selling music via mobile phones

Mar 21 2004 - 04:46 PM ET | Ringtones

Richard Huntingford, a British business man, is creating a system that will allow consumers to purchase music they hear on the radio through their mobile phones. While we've covered music for sale on mobiles before, this is the first we've heard of it being used in tandem with radio stations (it might help that Richard Huntingford is the top dog at a company that owns several stations). bq. This is how the venture is supposed to work. Potential customers will hear a song on the radio. They will then send a text message to download it - for £3 per song - to their phone. Chrysalis will take 95p of this (or around 45p, as and when it persuades radio stations that it does not own to offer the service). When the service kicks off in April, the songs will just be ringtones. But in the future you'll be ablel to transfer them to your computer. Clear Channel today announced a deal that does something similar, but just for ringtones. Our take: Why not just download the songs on your computer and then transfer them to your phone. It's cheaper and faster (if you have broadband at home). We just don't see consumers downloading full songs onto their phones and syncing them with their computers, even if its possible.

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