When is the mobile music business really going to take off? Not any time soon, a new Jupiter research report reckons. Just five percent of U.S. mobile subscribers side load tunes from their computer while less than half of that, two percent, download tracks over the air, despite the emergence of online stores from Nokia (News - Alert), Jamba and MusicStation.

 

The most common practice, rather prosaically, is assigning ringtones to phone book contacts (16 percent), even ahead of over-the-air ringtone downloads (12 percent). The sticking points? In this order - price, discovery, UI, DRM, storage and the fact many mobile users already use other portable music players.

 

According to Jupiter Research, about 66 percent of respondents to a recent survey said nothing would motivate them to listen to music on a mobile. That's a bit of a shock given the success of the iPhone (News - Alert), a device some have speculated will replace the iPod itself.

 

About 14 percent of users said they wanted over-the-air tunes. About 16 percent of respondents say they assign ringtones to phone book contacts, says Robert Andrews, mocoNews.net writer. 

 

There's potential trouble on the PC downloading front as well. At the moment, says Jupiter, European digital music services are neither successfully competing with illegal downloading nor replacing lost compact disc revenues.

 

Digital sales generated the equivalent just 32 percent of cumulative music revenue decline since 2004. European music peer-to-peer sharing is twice as widespread as digital music buying: 18 percent compared to 8 percent.