Mobile Commerce from Watermarked Broadcast Audio

Digital watermarking is a method to embed secret data into digital signals. We present a novel service that uses watermarking to add metadata into radio broadcast music. A user can record the music from radio loudspeakers and extract the watermark. The watermark can contain e.g. value adding metadata about the song or a link to an external server. This solution offers a new channel for mobile commerce. The usual application of digital watermarking is copy protection. In (1) nonsecurity oriented applications of watermarking has been discussed. Watermarking can be used to include value adding information to existing services without changes to the legacy systems. In this paper we describe a service that uses watermarks to embed metadata into radio broadcast music. In the service scenario the watermarked music is played through radio loudspeakers and the user records the analog music with mobile device, which is used to extract the metadata from recorded music. Fig. 1 illustrates the scenario where value adding services have been provided in broadcast media. The user is driving with his/her car while listening to a radio station. The radio station can embed a variety of information into music it broadcasts, e.g., basic information about the recorded musical piece, like name of the song, artist and album in which the song is contained. It can also contain links to web pages that provide extra information about the song or can be used to buy tickets to a concert or to buy CDs of the artist in question.