 Apple to open iPhone streaming development with software kit ·Jan 22, 11:38 AM From Cnet: To date, downloading music to mobile That has music industry executives wondering whether the future of mobile music will more resemble the Web services model gaining traction on the Internet—where fans stream music from multiple sources, including one another—rather than the purchase-and-download model pursued to date. In February, Apple will release a software development kit that “Imagine when something like a Last.fm becomes more streamlined and becomes truly portable, either on an iPhone or regular phones,” said one label exec who asked to remain anonymous. “Are people going to make more use of it? Maybe.” The M:Metrics report supports this theory. In France, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom, more mobile users were listening to music shared between phones via Bluetooth or other technologies than were doing so with music downloaded from a music store. In France and the United Kingdom, such shared activity accounted for 12.5 percent of the mobile music listened to in November 2007. Some wireless operators are already preparing for that reality. Alltel, for instance, recently introduced a service that allows customers to stream and download digital-rights-management-free digital music files from their home computer to their mobile phone from anywhere in the operator’s service area. Alltel charges $4 per month for the service; labels get nothing, because it’s based on users’ existing libraries. Should more devices follow the iPhone’s lead and become more open-access devices, labels are concerned that their carrier deals may no longer provide the guaranteed revenue they once had. Read the entire article from Cnet. share: del.icio.us.  Reddit  Digg  Yahoo  Wink  Windows  Google  Newsvine 
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phones has not proved a popular activity. According to a recent M:Metrics study, 20 percent of mobile users internationally listen to music on their mobile devices, but 83 percent of them are sideloading the music from their computers or from other devices rather than downloading it from a mobile music service.
third-party developers can use to write applications for the iPhone… The music industry will be watching for iPhone versions of existing music-focused online services.
