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

but will you have to pay royalties

[reezle]

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!

Humiliating

[anaesthetica]

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.

What's the difference?

[bdesham]

Then:

(cell phone rings with boring tone)
Everyone else in the room: Turn your f*cking phone off!

Now:

(cell phone rings with the #1 song on the charts)
Everyone else in the room: Turn your f*cking phone off!

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...

Don't Hold Your Breath

[limekiller4]

From the article:
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! ... Hm. Hey, so anyway, did you watch Friends last night?..."

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.

This time...

[Zekk]

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.

Re:Are you all idiots???

[balloonhead]

What if you own the CD - should you pay again to listen to a degraded version? Bugger that, once I've paid royalties I think I have a permanent licence to listen to that particular track. It's the whole time-shift / space-shift thing from another angle. If you own the VHS, is it piracy to download the DivX?

Legally, maybe; morally, definitely not piracy.

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 ?

Fair Use?

[NewtonsLaw]

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 :-)

When can I get custom alarmtones for my car alarm?

[Flounder]

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.