Rhapsody announced today that it is submitting an app for iPhone.
If approved, it will be the first on-demand music streaming app
on phones in the U.S.
I won’t speculate about whether Apple will approve the app or not. Even if Apple
doesn’t, others such as Android, Palm Pre, or Blackberry might. This means that on-demand streaming to the phone is essentially here.

The question remains, however, whether on-demand
streaming apps such as Rhapsody’s will lead people to really use phones for music. Currently, only 10 percent of cell phone users in the U.S. listen to
music on their phones. 
iPhone users are already more likely to use them to listen to music than users
of other phones (59% versus 8% respectively) . So Rhapsody may help move the dial only if it enrolls users
of other phones for this service.

As for the price of $14.99/month, here are some predictions from
my latest report on Future of Music on Cell Phones: “The premium for portability will go away. It will be increasingly difficult to charge
for something only on the mobile that is provided for free as part of an online
experience. For instance, Napster hopes to provide the same value and
experience to its customers across all platforms — the PC, Wi-Fi streaming
devices, and phones. The shares of the various players in the mobile music
subscription value chain will therefore have to be renegotiated.”