If the carriers won't provide it, somebody else will. That might just be the case for digital music. For the lack of any other audio music streaming or downloading service, other companies are starting to fill in the gaps. Internet storage provider Xdrive is an unlikely candidate to become the mobile equivalent of iTunes, but the company said today it has optimized its online storage tools to allow users to create the virtual equivalent of an iPod.

Basically, customers upload all their digital music files into Xdrive's storage locker and then install an audio-streaming media player on their Treo or Palm-powered device. The player then uploads play lists of all of the songs stored on the network. All you need is a decent data connection (Xdrive strategic development manager Steven O'Brien claims his Sprint 1X connection does the trick easily), and voila! An instant digital music library. What's more, the carrier doesn't generate a single red cent from the transaction, except of course for its standard per-bit billing rates. But isn't this what carriers have been trying to avoid for so long? Becoming merely dumb pipes for someone else's content?

Most of you are probably thinking this discussion is premature, that phones with the capability of supporting a streaming media player are few and far between (and Xdrive's application is further limited to Palm devices). Even fewer people have considered the idea of playing music on their phones. But if more services like Xdrive's pop up, and they develop a viral following while carriers and their music label partners sit on their heels, carriers could easily lose out on a potentially huge market.

It didn't take much for Napster and later iTunes to lock up the market for digital music over somebody else's wireline pipes. How long before those same companies start eyeballing your customers?

Contact me at kfitchard@primediabusiness.com.