UK Gets Digital Radio Download Service

At the end of next month, a new service is going to be taken out for a test ride in Birmingham (the one in England, not Alabama): a music download service which, by the sound of it, will be as simple as iTunes. The hook? The service enables people to buy a song they're listening to on digital radio, using their cell phone or other mobile device. The service is expected to go live by the end of the year.

Phones with digital radio capability are expected to be rolled out later in the year, but UBC Media, the group behind the initiative, predicts that in six years a quarter of all mobile devices will have digital radio. The idea is to capitalize on impulse purchases -- you hear a great song, so you buy it -- but provide for extended functionality so that you can access the music later from a Web-based music library using other devices. (And, one would think, a computer.) Songs will be priced between the benchmarks of an iTunes purchase and a ringtone.

Might work, might not. Either way, it's a creative initiative that has the major music publishers on board, and acknowledges how people interact with music in the real world. Is anything like this happening on this side of the Atlantic?