According to the BBC, “Musicians have begun looking to mobile phones to reach fans directly, bypassing the record label.”. Their article cites Andy Cato from Groove Armada as teaming up with O2 to offer tracks for download to mobiles. Andy sees this as a way of selling tracks to fans quickly, without relying on a record label.

On the face of it, this is a good idea. But mobile phone operators are as ruthless and aggressive as record companies. Surely it won’t be long before musicians are ‘signed’ to phone operators?

With respect to selling tracks quickly, Live8 managed to get the opening track from the London performance onto 200 download sites within one day. Isn’t that quick enough?

In any case, Andy could just sell the tracks from his own website, given that currently O2’s music service only works with two handsets. More exposure and no need to ‘share’ profits with O2.