• by September 14, 2005

So, our European brothers and sisters are wild about downloading music. Just how wild? According to a new report by researcher Generator, Europeans will spend $640 million in 2010 downloading music tracks to their mobile phones. Generator projects that spending on music ringtones is another $1.2 billion, making music downloads to mobile phones a $1.8 billion market--or 15 percent of total music sales by 2010, compared with just 3.4 percent in 2005.

The researcher says most of the growth in full-track downloads will come from music brands and third-party content providers reaching mobile users directly.

For the European market, the report identifies two different full-track mobile download markets--one for serious, permanent music and a second for novelty, or disposable music. It also anticipates that digital music players will lose some market share to music phones, but that the overall market for music devices and downloads will increase.

"There will be many situations where a consumer's first experience of digital music will come courtesy of their mobile phone, which they might use to download their first song or as a reason to rip their first CD," says Andrew Sheehy, research director at Generator, in a statement.

Overall, the report finds that full-length mobile downloads, real music ringtones, and online music will account for 39 percent of music industry sales by 2010--up from 4.4 percent in 2005.

We wonder how this forecast would look for North America, and can't say we've heard very much about music downloaded to mobile phones. Of course, Motorola and others are just coming out with such devices. If the trend takes off in Europe, (music downloaded to mobile phones), what happens to all of our digital music players--the iPods and such? Do they go the way of the Walkman or Discman?