Mobile Music Distribution: A Multichannel Approach

In contrast to what is happening in the Internet-based scenario, the music market inthe mobile scenario is far from being considered a large success. Several studies statethat excessive downloading time and high cost are the main burdens. Motivated bythe growth of social and mobile applications, in this paper we propose an approachthat aims at reducing both the downloading time and the cost to get digital musicwhen acquired in the mobile scenario. The proposed architecture exploits the usage ofpersonal communication technologies embedded in cellphones (e.g., Bluetooth andWi-Fi) to couple the current distribution model (mainly based on 3G networks), so asto provide a multichannel distribution model where users are free to redistributedigital music. The architecture includes a license-based security mechanism thatprevents unauthorized usage of digital music, and makes use of an incentivemechanism to stimulate and reward the music distribution among customers. Byanalyzing pros and cons of the music distribution chain, results show that theproposed architecture might help in reducing both the downloading time and the costto get digital music when acquired in the mobile scenario. Therefore, it might behelpful to the success of the mobile music scenario