Arbitron and research provider Telephia have released a new study on the mobile audio market - that is audio entertainment provided for mobile phone users - and found that it is a major growth opportunity for terrestrial radio providers.

According to the study, 6% of mobile phone subscribers have used one or more audio features in the last 30 days. Over-the-air song downloading has the largest awareness, followed by subscription-based streaming radio and FM radio reception on cell phones.

Interestingly, the majority of these mobile audio users believe that commercials "are a fair price to pay" for free content on their phones. Over 75% of those surveyed who download content to their phones and listen to FM radio agreed they would be open to commercials.

Do you think terrestrial radio programmers are looking closely at this market? You bet they are.

"Most current mobile audio users prefer the ad-supported model over paying a subscription fee. And this group is a very attractive demographic for advertisers to target as it’s comprised mainly of affluent, tech-savvy early adopters." said Wayman Leung, senior product manager for Telephia.

"For broadcasters looking to expand their platforms beyond terrestrial radio, mobile audio represents an untapped marketplace that they can exploit in partnership with mobile phone networks,” said Neal Bonner, Arbitron product development manager. "Radio broadcasters are uniquely positioned to deliver programming for these promising new audio services."

So, when a major terrestrial radio company like Clear Channel, partners with mSpot - a mobile audio provider with over 1 million subscribers - do you think that constitutes a "nationwide multichannel mobile audio service"? You bet it does.

[FMQB]
[Download The Mobile Audio Media Study (PDF)]