According to recent research by Entertainment Media Research, interest by consumers in downloading music to mobile phones has begun to die out - or certainly to stall, at any rate. Figures released by the research company from their survey of 3,000 consumers (done in association with Olswang, the law firm) indicates that the music industry's hopes that music for mobile phones will be big might turn out to be unfulfilled.

Their survey found that just 11 per cent of consumers were already paying for music downloads on their mobile. Double this number of consumers reported an interest in the ability in a similar survey a year ago. Just 4 per cent said they were very likely to start mobile downloading in the future; 44 per cent were very unlikely to do so.

When asked what do they do when they hear a track which they'd like to download to their mobile, only six per cent said they'd buy it from their network operator's portal. A massive 44 per cent said they simply weren't interested in downloading music to their mobile phones.

There's also bad news for technologies like Nokia's Visual Radio. When asked whether they'd purchase a track they'd just heard on the radio and download it to their handset, only 36 per cent found the concept appealing.
There is some good news, though. 52 per cent of those who said last year that they would be interested in downloading music to their phones have done so.