Slashdot Mirror
Ring-Tone Barons? Japanese Record Companies Raided
PuceBaboon writes "
The Asahi Shimbun is reporting that officers from the Fair Trade
Commission raided several major record companies in Japan, including
Sony Music Entertainment, Toshiba EMI and Avex, on suspicion of
creating a monopoly for the purpose of maintaining artificially high
prices on... telephone ring-tone tunes."
or are almost all telephone ringtones *overpriced*. I mean, come on, they are selling crappy midi files for outrageous (comparatively) prices. Perhaps its all just good business, but I get irritated at such extreme profit turns.
Make sure you pay top dollar for that ring tone. After all, it is _stealing_ if you use a ring tone you didn't pay us extra for, and only _we_ can allow you to add a new ring tone.
Is it just me, or is this rediculous?
First, that there is money to be had in making consumers pay to be able to upload a WAV file into their Cell phone, and second, that the government is breaking into corporate offices over this?
Bizarre.
Collusion among Japanese companies?
I'm shocked! Shocked!!
The GOJ raids probably 2-3 major industries each year on average. Collusion is bound to happen when:
1. almost every major company has its HQ in one city (Tokyo)
2. everyone knows each other
3. if/when a manager changes teams, it is assumed he will take the Db and any other data he can obtain on his way out the door
4. "gentlemanly cooperation" is seen as a way to maintain safe sales levels for everyone, while going for the jugular on external (overseas) sales
davejenkins.com |
Or you preserve global public sanity by just having a ringtone that rings instead of abusing cell phone rining as some sort of individualised message to the world. Bah. It's not like I have anything against mobiles, but heck, the vibration alarm is really all you need in public.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
They need to make new phones come with NORMAL standard ring tones. Not fairy tale musicals, no rotary style ring rings, how about a decent sounding 'ring ring' eh? The fact that I had to use Adobe Audition and pieces of a midi ringtone to make my 'ring ring' is an outrage. As far as musical ringtones from MP3s some phones support MP3 ringstones and more often than not, WAV ringtones. If you're lucky enough to have a smartphone, well you're like me and have a LOT more freedom over ringtones on your phone. MP3 > edit > drag drop > set as tone > done! Hell, I just got a freeware DiVX player for my cell phone :)
[intekra] - [www.plex.nu]
I don't know about anybody else here, but I imagine I'm far from the only one who would love to see those blasted things continue to have artificially inflated prices.
Full song on iTunes: $.99
30 second clip of "similar" song made with high pitched tones: $3+
Getting raped by your cellular provider: Priceless.