Trials of downloading music via DAB radio announced

The ability to download music tracks via DAB digital radio could be coming to DAB multiplex near you this summer (if you live in the UK that is). Primarily designed for mobile phones this new facility will let you download music using the spare data channel bandwidth on what I assume will be the MXR multiplexes. Heart will be the station trialling the service and I assume the downloads will relate to music that is currently playing or is on the station’s playlist.

This all appears to be an expansion of BT Movio platform which this year concluded trials into TV over the DAB network using a system called DAB IP. I think this sort of thing is what digital radio is all about in terms of changing what radio can offer the listeners however the radio industry must be careful not to reduce the already dangerously low bitrates used for digital radio via DAB in the UK to accommodate these services. If this trend in bitrate reduction continues then fewer people will choose to listen to digital radio via DAB because of the terrible sound quality.

There is no mention as to how the music downloads are protected as potentially anyone with a PC based DAB receiver (quite a rare thing now) could extract these downloads for personal consumption. There is also no mention as to whether it would be to allow actual DAB radios as well as mobiles take advantage of this service. In the future if DAB is incorporated into MP3 players we could potentially have the ability to add music to our personal collection as we listen to it via the radio which might help make radio more appealing to the iPod generation.

Radio Today article: http://www.radiotoday.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=664

Thanks to Mike Barraclough of the Yahoo! DAB group for bringing this article to my attention.