Towards music download and radio broadcast convergence in mobile communications networks

The transition from physical to digital music distribution is bound to have profound implications on the music industry. So far, most of the activity related to digital music distribution has been centred on the fixed Internet. In the meantime, mobile operators have been making significant investments in extending their network capabilities to support data services. This paper includes an analysis of the current state of digital music distribution, as well as future prospects enabled by the evolution of mobile networks. We build on this by presenting and analysing a novel model for music download over mobile networks based on the convergence between the music download and radio broadcast services.