The price tag is too high, and it doesn't sound fully ready for "prime time" but, UBC media may be offering up a taste of the world to come with its on the go music downloads, that is if the RIAA has any say in it.
Check this out.. you're listening to your snazzy digital radio (you know, the ones the US has completely messed up by supporting a different system than Europe or the rest of North America?) and you fall in love with a new song you hear. Instead of writing it down so you can find it online later, you can have your very own copy delivered right then and there.
"The way it would work is users would pre pay for the service similarly to how some cell phones have pre-paid minutes. A user could instantly purchase a song while listening to it on their digital radio service. Then according to Reuters, "impulse song purchase from UBC's service also will be designed for simultaneous downloading to a web-based music library that is compatible with other music players".
It's a bit far fetched, and I wonder how it resolves differences in DRM'ed formats depending on your choice of music player (maybe something like Navio would be useful here). No wonder the RIAA is suing XM over the XM2go radios, they must see it as direct competition to services like UBC is offering. Frankly, at close to $2.50 a track, they can keep their impulse buy, I doubt much of it sees the inside of an artist's pocket.
[via Soul Shine]
