E.T., iPhone Home

Will consumers listen to music on their cellphones?

You bet they will.

Not surprisingly, the iPod cellphone is rumored to be around the corner (and it probably won’t look anything like the conceptual sketch shown here).

Once your audience is trained to listen to music on their cellphone they can take that music everywhere the cellphone goes – which is everywhere. This will increase the cannibalization faced by Radio because it will provide another vehicle for mp3 players and, thus, for podcasting.

So does this mean your radio station should be on the listener’s cellphone?

Well think about it this way. Radio is really a narrow band of music variety presented in a relatively random order. Thus, streaming audio is as much “Radio” as your station is (if you’re music-based). That gives the big edge to the big players in streaming audio: The likes of AOL, Yahoo, Napster, MSN, etc.

I predict we’ll see those big names streaming their audio wares on a phone near you light years before Radio gets there.

This will be another case where we’re so late to the party all the good seats are taken.

By the way, are you podcasting yet?