I’ve been theorising for a long time now that radio and mobile make the perfect partnership - actually much better than the shotgun marriage of TV and mobile. And now there’s even the possibility of a business model, if that doesn’t seem quaintly old-fashioned, at this point.

The FT (can’t find a link to the actual story) has a feature about UBC Media, who have done a deal with Virgin Mobile that allows listeners to their digital channels to download tracks they’d like to own straight to their mobile. While it costs more than the 99p ($1.84) established by iTunes as the benchmark, at £1.25 ($2.32), I think it’s pitched about right to encourage those impulse purchases, assuming you have people listening in the first place.

Apprently, around half of this goes to the record companies, with the rest shared between Virgin, USC and the radio station itself. Add in a dollop of ad revenue for the station itself, mix well and I’d say that you have a recipe for a very nice business.

I was a big fan of Shazam, since they first started, which is a music recognition service. It was sooo cool to be able to hold your phone up to a music track and get an sms back with the details of artist and title. But, charging a premium for it was always going to be a stretch - I mean, how many times would you actually want to pay to use this? And they were very slow (for perfectly understandable reasons ie dealing with the music industry) to connect the query with an opportunity to buy.

But this idea seems to really crack the concept, with the perfect combo between impulse and ease of use. And get this - trialists (admittedly only 100 in the sample) downloaded an average of 7 tracks each per week, to their mobiles. This would have a very healthy impact on the bottom line of Virgin, the radio station and of course, UBC.

A further interesting spin is that most downloaders seem to be people who currently don’t really download music at all. So, it’s actually in danger of expanding the market too.

So that, Pop Pickers, is Russell’s winner of the “I Wish I’d Thought of That” Award.