XM to Offer Impulse Buys

XM Satellite Radio is bringing interactive music downloading to its digital radio platform. Customers will be able to push a button to save songs that are playing so that they will be downloaded via the Napster service when they connect their radios to a PC.

The technology could similarly enable advertisers to instantly send product information. Several online radio stations such as AOL Radio currently offer a similar technology today, but this would be a first for a wireless radio broadcaster.

Perhaps terrestrial radio stations will follow XM's lead and offer the service to advertisers when they shift to digital broadcasts during the next few years. Mobile phones could play too via text messaging. TV, which has talked about this for many years, will probably be the last to participate.

Providing a mechanism that enables interaction at the moment of interest (can you say impluse purchase?) is the dream of advertisers.