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."
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
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
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.
You have to BUY ringtones? What's this world coming to? Next thing you know, MS will charge extra for ding dongs it adds to messenger :O
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 why not just let a phone play a 10 second or so clip of an MP3? The decoder chips are cheap enough now.
The newest Nokia phones are able to use midi files or mp3 files as ringtones. You can load them via infrared, cable or bluetooth connection and thus don't have to pay a single cent for your new ringtones.
RedShirt
Microsft spel chekar vor sail, worgs grate !!!
I bought the cable for my LG VX6000 phone and use some third party software bit_pm to upload ringtones that I make from any sound file. I just lower the quality a bit (soundforge free trial or any other editor) and make it mono and cut about 30-60 seconds out of an mp3 to make my ringtones then upload them to the phone. Took a fair amount of head scratching to get it all to work right but there is no reason to pay just to format shift the music you already have to a ringtone. Its amazing how the verizon software that comes with the cable can't even convert my phone book into a .csv but some guy in his spare time has managed to let me make my own 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?
Record company raids you!
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...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Because they are recording companies.
(And to clarify, it's not just the vocals -- it's the particular recording, usually including vocals.)
The record company owns the recording, not the composition. To sell the record, the record company must licence the song from the composer (who is often not the performer in question.)
As an example, let's take the song "Remember (Walking in the Sand)", originally performed by the Shangri-Las, and written by George Morton. It was since covered by Patsy Cline, the Beach Boys and Aerosmith, among others.
If you wanted the Aerosmith version as your ringtone, you'd have to licence it from whoever owns that Aerosmith recording, and from whoever now owns the rights to the composition... but not from the Shangri-Las' right-holders, because you're not using their recording.
If you just wanted the song itself as a midi file in your phone, you don't have to pay anything to Aerosmith's label, nor to the Beach Boys' label, nor to the Shangri-Las' label -- because you're not using those recordings. You just have to pay whoever now owns George Morton's composition rights (provided the copyright hasn't lapsed) because that's all you're using.
yo.
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]
Because mobiles have traditionally had very limited software capabilities, they have been able to charge outrageous sums for mobile services. Instead of browsing the web you'll be browsing some specialized service with content created specifically for mobiles.
And the problem isn't just that the mobile operators and content owners do everything they can to keep it that way.
And even worse, people like Danish mobile analyst John Strand from Strand Consult are attacking anything which threatens this mobile hegemony by operators and content owners.
John Strand has been known to use his influence to try to make sure that today's situation with crappy and overpriced services will remain. He basically tells the press that "yeah, these people don't understand the mobile market and won't survive for long" if it threatens today's hegemony.
One specific example is the rise of software on mobiles that can browse the web instead of the customer being force fed what the operator wants him to. John Strand is using his influence to claim that companies that offer such solutions will never survive because they operate outside the "mobile food chain".
John Strand and his ilk are basically trying to maintain today's situation because overpriced mobile services are a good thing to them. It's a mobile market they know, and they are making good money by just being "consultants".
So yeah, mobile services suck and are over priced. Software like real web browsers is arriving to give the customer an actual choice and make it cheaper, but on the other hand, corrupt "analysts" like John Strand are doing everything they can to stop this more customer friendly development, and really fight to keep today's system with customer lock-in and over priced services.
Clever signature text goes here.
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.
Just for clarification this is referred to as a "cartel" in economics terms.
OPEC, the RIAA, the Cali (cocaine) Cartel, all the same.
Definition of cartel from my economics text (from the glossary):
From the actual text:
Basically the group gets together and decides that they will compete but not enough to put each other at risk. No one member can do something that would be harmful to the group.
For example, this is the reason that OPEC collectively controls oil output and not just one OPEC country. They decide together what is in the best interest of them all, creating unfair prices for the rest of the world as suplus is un-naturally replaced with deficit. (as opposed to an equilibrium being struck on its own)
Get your Unix fortune 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:
- 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.
- 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.from reading through the comments, it's painfully obvious that so many of you have no idea what the word "polyphonic" means. you seem to think it's the ability to play mp3s or whatnot from your phone. in fact, it's simply means the phone can generate two or more tones at once, hence giving it the ability to play some of the more complex midi files out there... /rant
http://ringtonetools.mikekohn.net/ has a great little F/OSS program called Ringtone Tools for generating your own ringtones from a variety of different formats for a cavalcade of phone models. The program (Ringtone Tools) runs on Windows, DOS, and *nix'es, with source fully available, and some purchasable PHP and Java versions. Really nice tool, I've used it to translate Nokia text ringtones into ones for my Motorola t120.
Yes, that's right, older cell phone models used to actually let you type the ringtones directly into them, without special software or cables, though that option has always seemingly been available for these types. Very nice, economical solution for those of us who want custom or special ringtones but not enough to pay a high price for them. Besides, it's not like these companies are making anime ringtones (Go Totoro!) available anyway.
Most men are not thought unwise until they speak.
I have a friend who says, "$0.99 for a song from iTunes??? I'd never pay that much!" Then she happily blows $20 a month at $1.25 a piece on stupid god damn ringtones for her cellphone.
. . . or, rather, misleading. It's not "ring tones" in the MIDI sense, but actual MP3 clips of songs that are the subject of the raid.
In Japan, anyone is allowed to make and sell MIDI-style ring tones as long as they pay a usage fee to the copyright office. This fee is then paid back to the original authors of the song--but not to the record labels. There are something like 200 companies producing ring tones now, and the labels get nothing out of any of them.
So when the next wave--ring songs, for lack of a better term; MP3 (or similarly encoded) digital sound--came around, the labels got greedy. Since they own the copyrights on the actual recordings, they decided not to let anyone but their own group companies sell clips from the songs. The Fair Trade Commission decided that this was unfair use of monopoly, and thus the raid.