The Impact of Incentive Mechanisms in Multi-Channel Mobile Music Distribution

Record labels and telecoms are using the pervasiveness of mobile technologies to create a mobile music market, where customers can have their preferred music at any time and in any place. The idea is to replicate the successful strategy of the Internet-based music market into the mobile scenario. In this paper we first analyze the current mobile music market and we show that this strategy leads to several problems (e.g., excessive download time, cost and protection). As a second contribution, we propose and analyze a multi-channel distribution strategy, where customers can cooperate to music distribution. The approach is based on the cellphone network, the free-of-charge communication technologies provided by cellphones, and on an incentive mechanism that financially compensates users for their cooperation in music distribution. The approach evaluation shows that the employment of an effective incentive mechanism can mitigate the problems of the current mobile music scenario, as it provides benefits to customers, cellphone network providers and music stores.