Continuing with my coverage of the World Telemedia event in Budapest, I discovered a little-known soon-to-launch mobile music and content service that harnesses visual search to sell content and keep the customer. Craze Productions, headed by Sam “Doctor of Dance” Kleinman, a digital media company specializing in Urban & Dance music, has quietly teamed up with DSPV Ltd., and Israeli provider of visual search solutions based on its own IP, for visual search. The service, which Kleinman tells me will debut in the U.K. in the next weeks (most likely before the holiday season gets into full swing), will allow users to shop till they drop using their camera-enabled 3G phones. (Check out this clip to see the service in use.) DSPV has also recently run a visual search service with Orange in Israel, delivering results the operator said exceeded expectations.

Kleinman’s new service will go beyond music content. Users who take a liking to an artist’s Phat Farm cap or a RocaWear jacket, for example, will soon be able to purchase apparel and a variety of other cool stuff using visual search. As Kleinman put it, the technology (and the no-brainer interface that visual search represents) makes buying music and merchandize “inescapable.” What you see is what you will get. And - because Craze sells D2C- Kleinman can monitor purchasing patterns and collect the analytics that will make for a better and more targeted marketing of music services. (Craze has recently sealed a deal with Sky Interactive TV in the U.K. to offer viewers video & music downloads, ringtones and video ringtones via Sky’s portal, Sky Net. Once on the Craze site, which users can access by tapping 1818 into their remote control, users can purchase and download to their phones.)

In Kleinman’s view, visual search will eventually “pulverize” the middlemen in the search & discovery value chain. This jives with what Tsvi Lev, DSPV’s founder, recently told me.  As he put it: The real power of visual search is the control it gives companies over keywords – without having to pay a cent for them. Put another way, visual search allows companies to associate their offers with brands and merchandize without having to own them. Want to sell a Black Eyed Peas ringtone? You don’t need to negotiate rights or buy a keyword. “The sale is triggered by a visual image – and companies can use any visual image of the artist to clinch the deal,” Lev said. Of course, some campaigns will continue to require users to capture specific images or barcodes with their phones. But the advance of visual search creates new opportunities for independent merchants to connect with their customers and sell their content. More importantly, it allows these companies to take a huge detour around mobile search schemes that cost money (keyword costs are on the rise) and threaten to send their hard-fought customers to competitor sites.