Ring Tones Will Save the Music Industry

tabdelgawad writes "Well, not quite, but according to Jay A. Samit, senior vice president for new media at music label EMI Group PLC, quoted in this Washington Post article, "This is huge. This is the largest growth area for music companies and our artists". The article goes on to prove two facts we already know: that the music industry is greedy (already asking for a bigger slice of this pie!) and that the porn industry is a prime innovator in marketing and technology :-)"

Comments

I dunno, but maybe...

[Lysol]

My brother lives in Tokyo and actually made some ring tones for Yamaha over there early this year. I thought it was weird cuz it seemed like such a big deal over there. Besides their phones being about 5-10 years ahead of ours (for real), they had a completely different attitude about it. They threw a huge party for the release there. He's a dj too, so they supported him spinning and had their ads and stuff all over - I guess kinda like a record release almost.

But it seems tho that since we're so behind here that that won't materialize like it has overseas - and not just Japan, but in a lot of other wireless countries. I dunno, our attitude and recording industry cartel just seems different here; hard to say what will happen..

Re:I dunno, but maybe...

[Lysol]

+2 by default. And behind because we're not interested in the micro like other parts of the world (SUVs vs. Japanese/European 'compacts'); desktop internet vs. cell phone internet, etc.
And because our corporations find it much more lucrative to stifle new technology for 'just good enough' stuff. If you don't think this is true, you should read some of the articles available on how the FCC screws the public over by pandering to the every wish of the media and phone companies, which have no desire to create better networks for their subscribers. We're behind, and that's a fact! We get very little for our spectrum that the FCC just gives away..

And then...

[Pig Hogger]

... some smartass oriental company will introduce a cell phone where the owner can either key-in his own ring-tone, or download via USB or whatnot a MP-3 to be used as such.

Of course, you can expect the RIAA to try to have it outlawed...

Its sad

[anonymous coword]

Im fine with the 35 ring tones that came with my Nokia 3310 Phone, and tone codes are everywhere on the internet, but there are all the stupid losers who phone £1.50/minute 0906 numbers to get a bastardised beeping version of the latest chart hit.

With Processing power on Mobile Phones getting better, it would make sense to be able to play REAL Sound files. A 20-30 second sound mp3 file could easily fit on a phone, and it could be worth the price of around £2 per mini song, but not a couple of silly beeps

Landline phones are starting to get more spiced up, the singing lizard phone for example. But they are FREAKING PHONES after all, and they are supposed to go RING RING, not beep beep beep beep beep beep beep, leave that to Ellen Fiess!

Well .. in the UK

[brightertimes]

I live in the UK where cellphones are very big, it's pretty much reached mass penetration now. Everyage group has mobile phones, even my grandmother has! In the UK a couple of years back pre-pay phones took off big style and there was a very big price war with handsets going for as little as $45 with no contract. Now.. the companies are finding it very difficult due to the amount of phones that have been sold people are not as keen to upgrade them as they would like. Except for the geek/uber stylish crowd everyone is pretty happy with their handsets. Now, because the lack of handsets being sold the mobile phone companies are in trouble due to: Paying ££££ billions to the uk goverment so they can have the spectrum for 3g phones. Vast market penetration of mobile phones already and a majority are not willing to upgrade Lot of people on pre-pay and using phones for "emergency use only", operators find it hard to break even. So...... all the networks are betting their bottom line on things like ring tones, downloadable screensavers (!!), logo graphics and picture messaging. Already ringtones are the such like have boosted profits in the shorterm, but I think picture messaging will (hopefully) be the saviour ... or job cuts abound :)

Copyrighted how ?

[dackroyd]

Can someone please explain why the music labels feel that they deserve to get any cash for these ring tones ? I am not a copyright lawyer, but I have been connected with most of the arguments.

AFAIK this is a classic example of a (remotely) derived work, and lets face it a phone going dee-da-da-dee-da is not in really remotely related to or produced from the actual music that they phone melody makers are trying to reproduce.

The ring tones don't use any samples from the music and the music composition is totally different, both through different timing of the notes and through playing only one (or a couple) of notes at a time. Therefore the person who makes the phone ring tone is making a completely new piece of work and shouldn't need to give any cash for the permission to distribute it.

The only thing that you could even try and argue is under copyright is the songs name, which would/should get laughed out of any court.

So although it looks like a nice revenue stream for the music industry, why should they get any cash ?

Re:Humiliating

[ttyRazor]

Just imagine how bad the music will get when they start writing it to be easily made into recognizable ringtones

Nokia Ringtone Composer

[nuxx]

The Nokia Ringtone Composer (part of this package here for the 3360) allows you to compose ringtones and send them via IR. You can also import MIDI songs and play with them from there... I'm sure there are more tools on Nokia's site, but these are the only ones I have experience with. These are great, though. Ringtones, sync with Outlook, full phone backup, etc, all over IR.