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."

Comments

Good

[Lord Kano]

I'd like to see this happen in the US. I'd also like to see pressure put on Cell phone makers to open up the system for user created tones.

Or why not just let a phone play a 10 second or so clip of an MP3? The decoder chips are cheap enough now.

I won't use the word conspiracy, but there is collusion between service providers and phone manufacturers to keep the price of ring tones so fucking high.

LK

Re:Good

[evvk]

At least my phone comes with software (albeit winblows-only) to convert
normal midi tunes to the limited format the phone wants. Then you can
transfer them to the phone with whatever expensive cables they sell or
by IR, or by putting the tune on a wap-enabled apache server.

Re:Good

[Alioth]

Buy your own phone instead of using the telco's one and you can do that. I bought a nice Nokia 6820 (because it has the qwerty keyboard when you open it - hard to irc with a number pad only). It plays standard MIDI files. I just stuck the MIDI files I wanted on my website, and just used the phone's web browser to fetch them.

I personally use the introduction to a fairly obscure game because it more or less guarantees my ring tone is unique (so no hunting for my phone when someone else with the same tone has their phone ring). With my last phone (a cheap Nokia, the type usually bought for kids for PAYG service), I simply composed my own ring tone with the phone's composer (for the same reasons). When I bought the 6820, I gave away the cheap Nokia to a friend who needed a phone, I think they probably still use my ring tone :-)

Re:Good

[NanoGator]

"I'm not sure where the other carriers stand."

I use Cingular on the central coast of California. Just to be a nerd, I acquired a few sounds of the handlink from Quantum Leap, converted them into .MP3, uploaded them to my webserver (apache, but not specifically WAP), and went to that page via my phone to download and install them. (My phone doesn't have IR or Bluetooth, and I dun wanna pay $60 for a cable..) Worked fine.

Re:Is it just me

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Tell me about it. Or tell my brother about it, he's the one who had to pay for my nephew's $550 cell bill. Most of the cost?

Ring tones.

The kid should have known better yes, he's fifteen, but damn.

If you have bluetooth...

[DrXym]

... or a datakit you can often copy .mid files over to the phone and use them as ringtones.

They're easy enough to find, e.g. here, but a web search for your favourite artist / song + "mid" will find them quickly enough on plenty of sites. Some sites even make them available by WAP so you can grab them straight to your phone with no PC.

Or be a chump. Most of the lowest common denominator tabloids are filled with full page ads where you can download ringtones and wallpaper for 4.50 / £3.00 each. You probably end up with the same MIDI file that the operator found on one of the free sites. I very much doubt that the artist gets a slice of that so why hand out money for something you can have for free?

Download for free

[CaptainZapp]

Applicable for Nokia phones, but may apply for other brands too.

You can always save the $, Euro, YEN for ringtones by finding a free midi site (annoying banners warning) and convert them yourself with the included Nokia software (sorry, Windoze only).

In addition I get the bonus of not knowing anybody else to have Led Zeppelins "Kashmir" as a ringtone.

Works for me and makes me laugh every time when I see those fantastic 4EUR99 offers...

Re:Can't you just upload them?

[mali]

In theory, this should be possible with most newer phones. However, if you have bought the phone from your network operator, you might have bought a crippled version of the phone: Vodafone sells these kind of phones here in Germany: You cannot use get photos out of the phone or get ringtones into it via Cable/IR/Bluetooth ...

I never paid...

[ImaLamer]

Don't search for "Free Ringtones" because you can only find pages with text that says "Free Ringtones**".
Usually with disclaimers at the bottom of the page like: **Free Ringtones by opening your phone and letting them out.

Try this site, went to check if it still worked and voila! Getting "Star Wars Theme".

I wonder which it is because I already have both of my cell phones set to "Imperial March" (been there for over year, had Super Mario Brothers Theme for a few weeks).

Check out their XXX text messages too. They include classics such as:

Id fuck u sitting
id fuck u lying,
if u were a bird id fuck u flying.
And when ur dead and long forgotten
ill dig u up and fuck u rotten

I've only used the TDMA (monophonic) tones from this site but they always worked, and sounded good.

Ringtones will go the way of the hip-pack

[michaelmalak]

One of my side hobbies is making people feel old by reminding them of past events that seemed like yesterday. I remember in 1995 saying to someone, "remember the early 90's with hip-packs? We're in the mid-nineties now."

I think I'll be saying the same thing about ringtones in 2006. At the office, it used to be a game to show off ringtones in a meeting -- all phones were left on. But that's gotten old, and so now they're all on vibrate. Of course the rules are looser in social situations, but I think it'll get old there too -- think restaurants, movies, even at-home DVD movies.

Besides staleness, I believe ringtones are an anachronism because:

1. The concept of a telephone ringing is from the 20th century where one had to run to the phone, rather than the phone being a personal borg-like appliance.
2. Cell phones are getting smaller all the time, so it's not as likely for one to, for example, leave it at the office desk and walk around the office.

What I see more likely is the cell phone replacing the iPod, but of course it's going to take some innovative hardware manufacturer to push this; the music industry is too laggard and reticent.

Who cares?

[shutdown -p now]

Sane people, I mean. Why would you even need to change the ringtone? You can't do it on a normal phone, and I didn't hear anyone complain.

Sprint users need not pay for NUFFIN

[djdrew6k]

For anyone using Sprint phones - I've never payed a single cent for ringtones or images on my phone, barring the cost per K for sending the raw data to my phone (somewhere in the realm of a few cents per K).

You can go to www.sprintusers.com, and using their Focus Uploader, you can send a JPG, PNG, QCP, or MID file directly from the internet (or from your computer, through the net) to your phone through a text message. This works with anyone using Sprint service. I love it.

I've tried looking for "real" ringtones, by going to ringtone websites or searching for "free ringtones" (which ALWAYS leads to sites asking you to pay for them... wtf?), but I've found that almost every time I could find a free, HIGHER QUALITY tone if I simply searched the web for MIDI files, totally ignoring the whole "ringtone" aspect of the search.