Mobile phone music downloads ‘are falling behind’

Downloading music to mobile phones has not improved over the years, according to one expert.

Tim Green, executive editor of Mobile Entertainment, suggests that the premium for getting songs straight from mobile phones is causing people to do it via PCs instead.

"[Major phone companies] all envisaged a future where people would download and pay for tracks from operator portals," he said. "People didn’t feel that they should be paying extra when they could go to iTunes or any other online download store and side load [transfer via a PC] to their phones."

Mr Green added that whereas ’sideloading’ has become more solid with the steady popularity of iTunes and Amazon, getting music straight from mobile phones hasn’t really kept up.

But as most people listen to music on the move, wouldn’t it be better if the benefits were there for us to download music on the move too?

I know that I’ve been out before and heard a song that I really want to listen to, but by the time I’ve got home to download it, the song’s gone right out of my head!

According to data published by comScore, the five leading European mobile markets – UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain – have 54 million people who listen to music on a mobile phone.

Out of these individuals, 85 per cent use a PC to download music and only eight per cent download directly from their device.

As far as I’m concerned, the premiums for downloading straight from a mobile device need to be removed before anyone expects to get an improvement on these figures.