Wireless Carriers Banking on Mobile Music

Yahoo! News carries an Associated Press story on using the phone as a portable music player. One of the factors that might possibly hold back the market as noted by Charles Golvin at Forrester Research is the fact most American music fans "have grown accustomed to using their home computers to buy, listen and organize their digital music."

David Card at Jupiter Research believed there was "great potential in sideloading," but was skeptical about users paying to download full tracks. He rightfully pointed out that iTunes "became popular because people fell in love with Apple's iPod music player, not the other way around." Card said, "People who think you're going to spend boatloads of money to fill up anything with downloads, by far, there's not enough evidence to support that yet."

Last, but not least, pricing will be a huge determining factor whether over the air music downloads take off. Everyone's waiting to see if consumers will pay a premium to get their music anytime, anywhere....