GCap to Stream to iPhone; Sell Content

This story already has cobwebs hanging from it, but it’s been busy week, dear friends.

British broadcaster GCap is preparing to stream its music services to the iPod Touch and the iPhone, and offer users the chance to look up the last five songs played, as well as purchase those songs, either through the iTunes Music Store or Amazon.com’s new download service.

Internet radio of most kinds hasn’t been available to iPhone users, but GCap’s engineers have found a way inside. (Future updates from Apple for the iPhone and iPod Touch may include Flash or Adobe Air, which might open the floodgates for radio streaming to these devices. We’ll see.) It’s a little buggy, apparently; the story I linked to says the stream currently cuts out when you click to buy a piece of music (taking you to one of the two stores).

I think it’s interesting to see a major commercial broadcaster dipping the toe into this space because it has a lot of potential – witness the AT&T/Starbucks deal. That’s not about making money from wifi, it’s about making money off all the stuff they think we’re going to do as mobile access explodes. And “explodes” is the right word – iPhone users are driving huge increases in mobile broadband usage in the US and Britain.

The other piece of this that’s fascinating is that it comes on the heels of GCap’s announcement that it’s shutting down it’s DAB services in Britain. They’re not commercially viable, says the company – and this in a country which has had one of the strongest content rollouts for DAB Digital Radio. BBC and others remain committed, however.