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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 :-)"
But will you have to pay royalties if your phone rings in a crowd, and others hear it?
Going off in a theatre is bad enough, but just imagine if it rang in a taxi-cab!
What worse way to become musically recognized:
"I take good songs, and translate them into annoying beeps. I'm proud of that and would like to publicly take credit for it."
Then again, with the general level of quality that the music industry expects of it new up-and-coming groups, he just may be able to get that fat record deal he's always been hoping for.
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ring tones become p2p ware and the music industry use this as a new excuse to close down p2p.
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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..
Of course, you can expect the RIAA to try to have it outlawed...
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!
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From the article:
... Hm. Hey, so anyway, did you watch Friends last night?..."
Approximately 50 percent of Europeans under the age of 30 have downloaded ring tones, according to Stonefield, who believes the U.S. market is ripe for similar growth. "There is no way that kind of distribution is going to be held back; it is a real social trend," he said.
Yes, it is a social trend, but not a U.S. one.
Most of the fads we see tend to have some obvious -- if obnoxious -- logic to it. Macarena? Catchy and annoying as all get-out. Pokemon? Competition, community, kids running around saying dumb things (which is precisely what kids are supposed to do). Micro RC cars? Cute and disturbingly entertaining to everyone but our employers and cats. I could go on for quite some time but because I wish to annoy you, the gracious reader, as little as possible, I'll get right to the point.
What do frickin' ringtones offer?
"Oh, hey! Cool, Rock Me Amadaeus as a ringtone! Sweet!
This is not a U.S. phenomenon and it won't ever be a U.S. phenominon. I'm not trying to imply that the United States is somehow more sophisticated, I'm suggesting that Americans tend to view cellphones ringing about as enjoyable as listening to a car alarm going off. And not because they're boring, monotone and tedious, either. We dislike the phone because it represents an interruption, rendered jarringly, like an audial ICQ popup (though I'm told they don't do that anymore).
Again, from the article:
"This is huge," said Jay A. Samit, senior vice president for new media at music label EMI Group PLC. "This is the largest growth area for music companies and our artists."
This is a sign that companies are literally scraping the bottom of the barrel, not the bleeding edge of the Next Great Thing.
My
Limekiller
Ringtones, THE way to get your music out there if you're a mediocre musician with no originality at all...
After all, did you ever hear an original ringtone...?
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The music industry may be able to make some money off ring tones that are distributed commercially. However, I seriously doubt that they can prevent you from programming whatever ring tones you like into your phone. And many phones now have digital audio recording of ring tones, so, at least technically, you can simply record whatever ring tone you like from whatever source you like, including another phone.
I'm slowly veering off on a tangent, but I think I'm actually impressed with the music industry - haven't decided yet whether or not that's a good thing. Now that technology can make music free (and available), why not make it omnipresent as well? Commercially, music is already tied to fashion and social identity. What about a signature song that uniquely identifies you? Sure, you can put it on your cell phone...or better still, what if *your* song played every time you called someone else? (Throw this onto other suitable appliances as you will.) For me, someone who wants to be accompanied by a walking bass line at all times, this would be a perk. If you had the money, you could even pay someone to write you that special, identifying song. Maybe the musicians and techno geeks out there should get a piece of this - I'd love to write my own ringtone and put it on my phone, and I doubt I'm the only one. Offer the wireless companies this customization at a less exorbitant rate than the RIAA would, and you'd have a pretty nice offer.
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Legally, maybe; morally, definitely not piracy.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
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 :)
So we need subwoofers for cell phones. Or at least speakers that can go down to 100Hz or so, to get rid of that tinny sound. Of course, you need some high notes so people can find the cellphone; with nothing but bass, the wavelength is too long for localization.
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 ?
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The record companies have the rights to the sheet music I would guess
That's true if the record company and the music publisher are owned by the same conglomerate, such as Warner Bros. Records and Warner Chappell Music (owner of "happy birthday to you") both owned by Warner Communications, a unit of AOL Time Warner Inc.
but they must not have any ownership if I listen to the radio and transcribe it myself.
No matter how you hear a copyrighted musical work, it's still copyrighted. Unlike with computer program copyright, there's no way to "clean-room reverse engineer" around music copyright. Even if you only unconsciously plagiarize a copyrighted musical work, you're still liable under USA copyright law.
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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.
Who cares about the music _industry_, who's going to save music?
'Nuff said.
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what is the difference between me playing a tune on my piano at home (presuming that I've legally bought the music sheet) or me playing it on my phone?
Subject to the fair use doctrine and some other exceptions, the owner of copyright in a musical work has the exclusive right to perform the work publicly (17 USC 106). Playing a ringtone is potentially a public performance; playing a song on a musical instrument when nobody outside your family unit is present is not (17 USC 101 definition of "publicly").
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Now I believe that one of the specific "fair use" exclusions to copyright is for reporting purposes.
:-)
In such cases of course, the excerpted piece of otherwise copyrighted material must only be a small percentage of the original work.
This allows one newspaper report to quote a few lines from a competing publication without fear of breaching their copyright.
So what's wrong with the claim that turning 10 seconds or so of a top-40 song into a ring-tone isn't also covered by this "fair use" exclusion because it's only a tiny percentage of the original work and it's *reporting* that someone has called your cellphone?
It would certainly be an interesting sharkfight if someone decided to test it out in the courts
If I am at your house and use your phone for 500 minutes, how much does it cost you? Nothing (beyond the money you already spent to have active service).
You see, in many other countries, there is a per minute fee, on top of the monthly fees, to use your land line phone. Given the insane prices of local phone service, it is no surprise that mobile phone rates (especially the early days of digital networks) looked very reasonable to them, and completely outragous to us.
As for the notion that we like big out of gluttony, I think you are overgeneralizing. Small cars are popular in Europe because of their narrow, treacherous streets, many of which were laid down before cars existed. Most midwestern US cities became heavilly populated after cars existed, and grew up around big roads. I own a massive Crown Victoria, but if I lived in Europe or Japan, I would want a little Mini or something, if I owned a car at all.
Likewise, we have big yards because real estate is so much more cheap and abundant than elsewhere. I would need to be a multi-millionare to own a house as big as mine in Japan.
How we dress? Have you been following Japanese fashion at all? The most excessive "fashion slave" in the US would become exhausted trying to keep up with changing J-pop trends.
"A smaller phone is not very likely to be perceived as being better, here in the US. Put some beazzler jewels on them, and a "Polo" label on them and then they'll move."
A stroll through Best Buy proves you wrong almost immediately. Small fold up phones are almost always double the price of a big blocky one with the same features. We put a very high value on small phones, and the only time people buy color bezels is when groups of them get identical phones from work, and want to be able to tell everybody's phones apart at a glance.
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All I want is my car alarm to scream out, ala James Brown "HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY"
My phone's ring is The Liberty Bell March, also known as the theme to Monty Python's Flying Circus. It came built in to my phone. I don't confuse my phone ringing with anybody elses, and I get a secret little geek thrill every time my phone rings.
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Assuming you're not in a space where noise would be a problem, having a personalized ringtone helps users distinguish their ringing phones from others'.
Whenever I'm in a public space and I hear the "Nokia" ring, I often see 4 or 5 people going for their phones. If those had people personalized their ringtones, they might have been able to save themselves a bit of mad scrambling.
(FWIW, when I'm in public, my cellphone is set to vibrate. No confusion for me.)
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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.
Re-read that paragraph.
If a ringtone's "musical composition is totally different" from an existing musical work then, by definition, it doesn't sound the same. However, what we're talking about is works that do sound the same.
Note, there is a distinct difference between "identical" and "the same".
When I was a kid, I could play John William's Star Wars theme tune on my tinny Casio keyboard. Sure, it wasn't "identical" - nobody was ever going to mistake my performance on a kid's toy with that of a full, professional orchestra - but it was "the same" as far as any listener was concerned. My friends and family were impressed I could play Star Wars and, to a 6 year-old kid, that was all that mattered.
However, if I had tried to sell recordings of my rendition of the tune as an original work then the corporate lawyers representing John Williams (or his record label) would have stomped all over me, and rightly so. I would have been infringing on the copyright of an established artist, pure and simple.
The same is true today, and not just in the arts world - just because I could create a close (but not identical) copy of the classic Coca-Cola bottle that doesn't give me the right to use it commercially packaging my own brand of cola or other beverage.
Bottom line: there is a world of difference between composing an original work (even one that is inspired by or draws on previous works) and a simple reproduction of it, no matter how basic. (I won't even bother expanding on the argument that the next generation of phones that support polyphonic ringtones can produce tunes that are as good as 128kb/s MP3s.)
If it walks like a duck, sounds like a duck and acts like a duck, then it's pretty likely to be a duck. Similarly, if a ringtone sounds like Run DMC's Walk This Way, The Prodigy's Firestarter, or whatever, then the same rule applies.
Finally, your assertion that "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", is laughable. You claim to be familiar with the arguments surrounding copyright ownership but yet you don't know that you can't copyright facts?
If what you said is true then the record labels would have shut down CDDB and FreeDB years ago. And artists (or their labels) would be suing each other left, right and centre over song titles. Last time I checked, Huey Lewis And The News weren't suing Frankie Goes To Hollywood over the name The Power Of Love, or vice versa.
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There are a lot of rogue WAP servers out there, and if you know where to go you can download the tones for free, the only thing you have to pay for is airtime, which would be ~30sec-1min (or you can download them to your PC and then PC-Link it to the phone). Also Nokia introduced a MIDI phone about 6 months ago, some of my friends have it and have set up their own WAP servers with MIDI from which they uploaded the song (apparently the PC link to that phone doesent seem to work). But i must admit that the sound is cool! (Ever seen heads turn as someone's phone starts ringing Zelda theme in full MIDI at the top of its digital lungs?)
Here is the link to ONE of the MIDI phones.
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Who thinks that the whole mobile telephony market is the grossest example of feature overload ever? It puts dot-com boom to shame. You can take pictures with a cell phone, but you still can't have a conversation without static and a choppy signal. There's no such thing as perfect nationwide coverage, but you can customize the image on the screen. Who gives a flying fuck about playing a bad, not-even-midi-quality song for a ring tone when the phone itself works badly?
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
The first GSM mobile phone I ever owned (back in 1999), a Nokia 3210, had a ring tone composer which I could use to send ring tones I composed to my friends who had compatible phones. Newer 3xxx (e.g. 3310/3350, etc.) models even have the ability to resend tones that have been received. Heck, if this isn't (an admittedly primitive) P2P network built on top of GSM, I don't know what one is. With SMS chat services, getting the tones you want is not too difficult.
But then again, it seems that the United States is somewhat backwards when it comes to cellular telephony for some reason. We've been doing this in the Philippines for at least five years almost.
Odd thing for a third world country like us to have market penetration rates for cellular phones approaching that of the wealthiest European nations. Heck, I see street vendors here who have GSM mobiles!
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