Slashdot Mirror
Cellphone Songs Overpriced?
Carl Bialik writes "Sprint's music store, the first major legal music-download service accessible from cellphones, is charging $2.49 per song because the recording industry and the wireless carriers are engaging in 'a dangerous fantasy,' according to the Wall Street Journal. From the article: 'Since people will pay $2.49 to download a snippet of a song, there's no reason they won't pay that much to download the whole thing. It's an enticing prospect, but one based on the idea that ringtones and downloads are similar. They're not; customers don't see them the same way and won't pay the same price for them, and no amount of wishful thinking will make them change their minds.' Last week, Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg also criticized the pricing: 'For that kind of money, you'd better really, really, really want to download that new Kenny Chesney song, RIGHT NOW, before you can get to a computer.'"
yesterday? I didn't realize the WSJ was so desperate for clicks.
What's wrong with them?
...where you download the same damned song over and over and over again....but it's FREE.
Why would I (or anyone else, for that matter?) want to pay $2.49 for a song I can only listen to on my cellphone when I could buy the same song from iTMS for $0.99 and listen to it on my iPod and computers, and burn it to CD then listen to it anywhere?
I am an Army of 1 in 10
tell our new cell-phone-music-pandering overlords to kiss my royal @$$
Who's with me?
A couple fans told me that my last journal entry was mint; give it a shot. Hope you like.
So, Slashdot seemed to think that a T-Mobile ad was appropriate.
"What makes a cellphone cool?"
A. Beige antenna
B. Real buttons
C. Bluetooth technology
Can I get a "CowboyNeal" option?
#1:
..... if these songs are priced properly then i think it will help in stopping piracy.
When you think about the ridiculous prices people pay for ringtones it's not that crazy. So maybe it'll work for the songs that you just HAVE to have right now, but otherwise why wouldn't you save a few dollars and just wait till you're home and get onto the iTunes store?
#2:
First: Mossberg is almost right.
The other is the cellphone carriers, or, as I like to call them, "the Soviet ministries," which too often treat their customers as captive and refuse to allow open competition for services they offer over their networks."
Should be The other is the U.S. cellphone carriers... since competition works and takes care of this in all other markets.
In Sweden downloadable music for cellphones is 9 cents (0.69 Swedish Crona) per song from ComvIQ [tele2.se].
Second: No-one outside the U.S. will ever buy music just for their cell phones. Everyone over here uses SonyEricssons excellent K750 [sonyericsson.com] or W800i [sonyericsson.com] , syncing them with iTunes and MacOSX using scripts like iTMW [fidisk.fi] or apps like Dreamsicle [kaisakura.com].
Third: I bet a case of beer that SonyEricsson [sonyericsson.com] will include iTunes [apple.com] in their cell phones during 2006. The demand is huge and they know they will have to do it, sooner or later. Nokia will also include iTunes as soon as they realize how Real sucks bigtime.
#3
This type of high pricing is increasing the copying of music and other illegal activities
There.. now the discussion can end.
It's an enticing prospect, but one based on the idea that ringtones and downloads are similar. They're not; customers don't see them the same way and won't pay the same price for them, and no amount of wishful thinking will make them change their minds.
<aol> Me too! </aol>
Seriously, they are absolutely 100% correct here. Ring tones and songs are viewed as completely separate entities. People are willing to pay more for a ringtone than for an actual song in the same way that they're willing to pay more for a movie soundtrack CD than for a DVD of the actual movie itself.
The record companies should be happy that people don't mind the exorbitant ringtone prices, and leave well enough alone. If they accidentally succeeded in making consumers compare buying a ringtones to buying a song, it would probably wind up driving the price of ringtones down...
the convenience is worth it. (Some) people were saying that itunes wasn't worth it - why pay the same price per track as a cd for a lower quality version? If it's overpriced, the price will end up dropping.
Unpretentious Sydney reviews by unqualified Sydney reviewers
He's re-posting a high-moderated post from an earlier thread as a means of Karma-whoring, probably so he can crapflood more effectively later. Oldest trick in the book.
Too bad a quick scan of my recent posting history will show you that he cut-and pasted the whole damned thing (from a thread where it was far more relevant), and I happened to log in and see it, so I could point it out. Kindy spend mod points to bitchslap him into oblivion.
Hey Karma whore, next time, at least take the trouble to plagiarize from some other site.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Mod this copy and paste troll down.
I see a lot of people questioning the reasoning here, saying that it's ridiculous to pay $2.49 or whatever for a song. The premise, however, is that people are ALREADY PAYING JUST THAT for a small section of the song as a ringtone so they will probably take the whole song for the same price. Hell, if they offer the song and ringtone snippet combined for the same price, they're probably onto a winner. I know that neither you (informed Slashdot reader) nor I (cheapskate student) would pay this much, but if people are already laying out the cash for this stuff why not sell it this convenient way?
It's not just $2.49. Song providers for cellphone doesn't allow you to download. You have to wait for something like message for the link on your cellphone and download via your cellphone wap browser (GPRS for WAP cost $ too). So it's more than $2.49 in total which is absolutely ridiculous.
Is quantity. People only use a couple ringtones at most, and generally only one even if their phone supports more. A new one is generally only purchased when they grow weary of the old one, which lasts for awhile. Thus, it doesn't seem so bad since you don't pay that often.
Music isn't the same thing, people want a lot of music. Nobody listens to the saem song on loop, they listen to a variety, and with MP3 players a bigger variety than ever. Thus it's bought in larger bulk. Well, that means the price needs to be lower, so people will balk and not pay it.
It would be like noticing that I'll pay $40 for a bottle of Champagne and thus assuming I'll pay the same for a pack of soda. Nope, sorry, all other considerations aside, I consume too much soda. I can swing the $40 once a year or whatever, not once a week.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
People are willing to pay the seemingly high price of $2.50 for a ring tone because they will buy them much less often than they buy songs. Most people will buy one ringtone and use it for a month, more or less, then move on to another one. When they go to buy songs, through iTunes or some other service, they're usually buying multiple songs at once, fairly often. At that point, $2.50 becomes far too high a price to the consumer to continue buying songs at that rate.
.99c per song, and what's more is that they actually want to do it. They don't hesitate and think, "is this worth it?" A few dimes over that price is all it really takes to make them decide "no, it's not."
It doesn't take a lot of common sense to figure this out. Why the music peddlers can't figure out is beyond me. They're always trying to push the boundaries of what the consumer will allow in the way of pricing. Right now, iTunes has it just about right. People are willing to pay
hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
Water too wet?
Microsoft intent on world domination?
Apple makes pretty hardware?
Leeroy Jenkins rules at WoW?
I would definitely pay more to hear less of our favorite artists like eminem and britney spears. I mean if this isn't the best thing that has happened to current day music, I don't know what is!
For over a year now, i've been using audacity and kandy to make my own ringtones and transfer them via a $11 USB cable to my Motorola V180. Voila, free ring tones from my massive collection of music.
Not only that, but i can generally make much better sounding snippets, and pick the part of the song that i like (or the whole thing).
This works great for wallpapers made with gimp/xv/imagemagick as well.
He's asking for negative moderation on a reposting of a highly-moderated post from an earlier thread as a means of Karma-whoring, probably using an alternate account to post the original reposting. Second oldest trick in the book.
Hey circuitous Karma whore, next time, at least take the time to flame a repost that ranks highly on some other Karma-based comment system.
I'm kind of surprised that the title of this thread actually has the word "overpriced" with a question mark next to it...
Well, the opinion of the author for the parent article and the various analysts quoted therein all boil down to the same basic conclusion: consumers aren't that stupid. Obviously, $2.50 per song just isn't going to fly in the real world.
The cellphone companies and the record companies seemed to have formed a much different evaluation of their customers as a key to it's success: they're as dense as lamp posts and will pay almost any amount for something - even if they can ordinarily and easily buy the exact same thing cheaper elsewhere - just because it comes from us, your beloved cellphone provider.
I don't own a cellphone and have no plans for one. Nevertheless, as a casual, outside observer, I'm rooting for one of humanity's famous freebies on this one - common sense.
I remember reading "Rock and Roll" magazines when I was a teenager and seeing page after page of ads for t-shirts, bandanas, stickers, etc.
I was browsing magazines a few months ago and saw that one of the books I used to read was still being published. For kicks I bought a copy. Later on the train depression overtook me as I realized that...
1. I had no idea who ANY of these bands were, nor did I want to.
2. T-shirts have been replaced by ringtones. Page after page after page of RINGTONE ADS. Ai yi yi...
Back in my day we annoyed people with our stupid shirts, and uh, we were GLAD to have 'em!
I wouldn't even pay 5 cents to download a ringtone.
This may not unseat the pyramids.
"Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history.
'Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn." - RMS
So yes, Slashdot is more 'political' these days. Is it such a bad thing?
Bolding mine.
Fast forward iTunes to 2005 and iTunes is so worth it, the RIAA is trying to muscle in on pricing. Throw in the MPAA, whos only saving factor right now is the fact that movie sizes are still fairly large and cannot be easily traded online (700 megs is still fairly large), and you have these two **AA groups suddenly muscling into legal online trading business Mafia-style.
Same with cellphone songs. Fast forward to 2005 and are cellphone songs STILL worth it? Theres iTunes and virtually free with any new pre-built computer CD burners for those with regular access to a computer. If you have an iPod (or more or less any other mp3 player), bonus points there. Some music CDs are now sold at discounted prices either through the bargain bin, used sales, trade-ins, coupons, etc. On top of all that, theres a lot of recent stigma against loud cellphones, use of cellphones in public areas is (mostly) banned (movie theatres), and of course theses the recent writing of some laws prohibiting driving while talking on a cellphone (even with 'hands-free' sets).
By the time you get through all the modern hassle of having a loud cellphone, you might as well just buy a cheap $50 or so portable CD player and use that in order to reuse your old CD music library. Got a big CD library, bonus points there. Too lazy to swap CDs? Drop an extra $50 for an iPod Shuffle (arguably the best mp3 player in terms of reliability-price ratio).
Mod this parent left by three, the parent of this parent needs to be modded clockwise and the parent of the parent of this post's parent needs to have its moderation put through a bitwise XOR with a prime number between 11202 and 13407. Once completed, delete all moderations, all posts, and spend 50 minutes studying dewarneb.
Need a hint? Consider when's the last time you heard a cell phone ring and it actually sounded like a ringing phone of some sort?
Here's another hint. It has less to do with the songs or the artists than it does with the psychology of the consumer and their own egos.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
would be a lot more feasible if they charged a percentage of what a cd costs. If it's 16.99 for a CD by a specific artist and you want a track off of it, that track should cost a dollar oh seven. Making prices the same as what the disc would cost at the store is logical. Which means, obviously, the RIAA won't go for it.
77 HITS
Really Long Off Topic Combo
Maybe they think that someone will download hundreds of $1 full songs, but only four or five $2.49 songs. For the companies providing the content/network; they undoubtedly want to make more money for the lower-volume sellers.
Like, from the supply-side angle: A hammer costs more at your local hardware store than it does at Wal-Mart.
Anyone heard anything about this company? www.mobzilla.com -- looks like the same thing but from a 3rd party.
The real problem is the people tend to be stupid and not able to assign money and things the right value. /. story.
No medical doctor will prescribe you to download songs from your wireless carrier in order to keep you alive.
So it's only your choice. A choice to be stupid or not.
The other side is that we hve companies relying on people stupidity. But this topic will be covered in another
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
They forget about people who dont have a computer or inet access to download an mp3. And when your out and about, 1.99 or so for a ringtone is a nice impluse buy.
And for ringtone sites, they have to pay kick backs to the telco they work with, unless you are a 3rd party site not linked on your "walled garden" homepage on your phone's ringtone site.
Also size, ringtones are small files compared to a 192k full length mp3, and most phones have limited memory.
I guess in a couple years when everyone has umts and a gig of memory in the phones the WSJ article might make some sense about price fixing.
Sadly I know many people who would buy a song for $2.49. They do what ever is popular and basically go around playing tunes on there phones while walking down the hallway. This might not make sense for the common adult. But for a teenager to have what's "hot" these days and having full length ringtones is all what they really go for these days. So expect to see a but of teens all huddled around using the cellphone as a stereo. I seen it happen with little ringtones which only last 15 seconds. So I am not surprised to see this go popular if they see some kind of pop icon showing it off as "cool". Just like the Hummer H2 everyone saw the rapper 50 Cent with it. Two week's later everyone would talk about H2's and some even go and buy one. Money is no object when it comes to popularity.
My friend just bought a new Samsung phone (or was it LG?) through Rogers here in Canada that supports wave or Mp3 downloadable ring tones. He didn't want a musical ring tone he wanted a real mechanical bell ring like that from his old rotary dial phone. We recorded the phone ring as a wave file and uploaded it to the phone, easy as pie. We could have chosen any song in his collection without purchasing a ring tone, although Rogers certainly offers that option.
I know at least a half dozen other friends whose phone will do the same thing given the proper cable. Why are people paying for ring tones? It must be convenience or perhaps its due to Rogers not crippling the features of their phones like other carriers in the U.S.
Rogers Wireless in Canada offers a music store http://rogers.com/musicstore/, the Rogers MusicStore, which allows you to purchase songs that you can download onto your computer, and onto your phone, provided you use a Nokia 6620 with the MusicStore client installed. Track costs range from $1.25 and up last time I checked, with $1.00 for the cost of the data transfer of the track you purchase.
...to be able to delete these annoying tones on other people's phones.
from the I-got-ripped-off-at-Great-America-again! dept.
Brand Name Drugs Surprisingly More Expensive Than Generics
from the v1@gr@-isn't-a-generic? dept.
Study Finds Americans Spend Way Too Much Money On Pointless Gadgets
from the look-at-me-I-have-a-clapper dept.
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Perhaps John Raulston Saul *is* the lone voice crying in the wilderness...
We are not just wallets to be picked clean in the most expedient way; perhaps it is time to remove the fictional person status from corporations, and make some other legal arrangement that would involve more of an explicit social contract.
As it now stands, the corporations have taken over much of the public dialog.
Having a moral finesse less then your average alley cat, they strive to offer the best "shareholder value" by an official policy that appears to be one of rapine and pillage.
Perhaps we should have "The Corporate Hun" award?
Or perhaps the Corporatist Pravda where the Official Truth can be promulgated unto the masses?
This is progress?
Is why people don't put the songs on their phones themselves? They're quite happy sending photos to each other via bluetooth and downloading songs to their iPods so why don't they download songs to their phones?
I've been doing it for a 4 or 5 years now (initially with IR and midi which I could understand was probably beyond most) but now that its just a case of dragging an iTunes song too your desktop then pressing cmd-shift-b (or right clicking it and choosing send file) to send it to your phone it amazes me that people don't do it more often.
I guess this is the point that the poster was trying to get across. People really don't associate iTunes music with ring tones. It's completely seperate in their heads. One's an impulse buy that they can do whilst watching TV, or waiting for a bus, the other is a considered purchase, even if it is half the price. The only thing that could change that is if Apple introduce a 'make ringtone button' to iTunes - that would REALLY piss off a lot of people (except of course the customers).
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
There's a big, wide area between not wanting to learn about politics and not wanting everything in your life to be political. I don't want politics in a lot of things, like my video games for example, or my technical information. If I bought a book on Linux Administration and it truned out to be 20 pages of tech information and 400 pages of OSS preaching, you can bet I'd be pissed. It's not because I'm ignorant of politics, it's because I don't like spending all my time on any one thing.
/. there are politics relivant to geeks, however it does seem to be getting a little heavy these days. I started comming here for the geek features, espically things like cool geek projects. I'm not that intrested in politics, as I find there are better sources on the net.
I don't mind politics on
Ding Ding Dinga Ding. Thats whats wrong. Whats wrong with having your phone just ring like a normal phone, instead of paying £2.50 to get that bloody frog?
To err is human. To forgive is not company policy.
Yes.
Hell, no!
A Ringtone is maybe only part of a song, and maybe not full MP3-quality.
A download is both, and you can use any part of the song you like as a ringtone too!
(well, unless your phone's software sucks, like mine does; never again a Nokia...)
where are people paying 2.49$ for snippets of a song?! seems to be extremely wishful thinking on the services side
And if that happened, then people would buy them at the same rate as ringtones - typically once every few months.
customers don't see them the same way and won't pay the same price for them, and no amount of wishful thinking will make them change their minds.
Man. If only we had some sort of a SYSTEM for determining what things should be priced, some sort of an open market in which companies could set prices and see how many people are willing to pay that price. That would be great.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
Isn't this the good thing about capitalism? The Market will answer the question as to whether $2.49 is too high a price. If Sprint has done their homework they've had employees sweat the details of trying to predict the acceptable price point for their service. If they charge too little, they leave money on the table; if they charge too much, few people buy the offering - then you'll either see the price go down or Sprint retract the offering. Basic Econ/Marketing. Too high for YOU is not necessarily too high a price for the whole market. If Sprint meets their sales expectations then the price was just right.
As someone who set up and managed a major legal music-download service accessible from cellphones over three years ago I really wish the Slashdot editors would actually verify "first" claims like these.
Oh yes, and in case you were wondering, the music tracks were overpriced back then too.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
That person obviously lack understanding of the market they are entering. I will just Bluetooth my mp3 over to my phone, thank you.
My old Nokia 3210 had a feature called "composer" where you could type in a tune, note by note, up to 50 notes long. You got three octaves including accidentals, but only one timbre {"tinny little mobile phone speaker"}. Still, if you were canny, you could fit in just enough of the tune to recognise; and 50 notes is actually long enough to answer a telephone, so nobody is going to notice if it stops short.
.....
My new Sony Ericsson {bought before the rootkit debacle, honest!} k750i supports the ability to download ringtones from my phone company's overpriced music store, but it also has several wireless transfer modes. And although the phone refuses to allow you to send a paid-for tone by bluetooth or infrared, there is one thing it can't or won't stop me doing, one wireless transfer mode that is available unconditionally.
If I press Menu, Entertainment, Record Sound, Select, then it uses the phone's own mic to record a sound bite -- which I can later use as a ringtone, and even send to other people by BT or IR. And it works better than you might think. Modern phone mics are quite directional; it has automatic gain control; and the ultimate frequency response is limited at playback time by the ringer speaker. These are all factors that work in your favour. What can the phone manufacturers do about this? Not a lot. They can't very well make phones with no mic; though I admit, I would certainly buy one for my mother if they did
I can get all the ringtones I want, just from watching the TV adverts for them -- so I must be saving a fortune! Although admittedly, it is kind of like a "walk instead of taking the bus - save a pound; walk instead of taking a taxi - save a fiver" saving, cos it's not money IO would ever have spent -- if I couldn't get them for free, I would be more than happy to do without.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
1) start with a bad business model (overpriced, no consumer rights)
2) when you just loose money, blame it on p2p piracy
3) lobby for and obtain government protection of your racket.
4) profit!!!
Sprint isn't forcing people to pay this amount. In fact, I doubt people will. Since Sprint is the first to market with this service, I suspect that rival carriers will discunt their own offerings to try and cut into the market. Over time, supply and demand will force prices down.
Note that this should still have some effect, even if Sprint phones are locked into Sprint ringtones. Those who absolutely have to have a song at this price will probably consider switching services to a cheaper alternative.
You don't know anyone with young teenage kids, do you?
Pretty much every teenager in Europe has a cell phone, and most of them want to customize them in some way. Girls go for the Hello Kitty flashing led signal attenuator, boys go for their rock band sticker and studded leather carrying strap. Every model aimed at children are designed for aftermarket "tuning" upgrades, such as swappable cases in different colors and textures, neck clips, carrying cases and the like. You can get silk-screened boys-band cases to swap out the uni-color one, its a standard clause in any music contract to license the band's image for cell phone products. Many pop CDs now come with extra phone-sized stickers inside, so tweens can decorate their phones.
Then there is the market for downloadable ringtones, backgrounds and screen savers. It's huge right now, because its very difficult to get a ringtone onto a handset other than through the service provider. They can be downloaded as specially tagged SMS/MMS messages, so it's easy to just hit a website and have a new tone DLed to the phone. At the end of the month, the DL shows up on your phone bill. Kids don't understand offset pricing, so they tend to DL hundreds of tones to find the one they like, or change them every day to be one step ahead of the "uber-cool" crowd. It's a scam filled market (google for "gsm frog ringtone").
The recording execs see that the DL market is now 10%-15% of their total revenue, based on 20 second DLs of current pop songs and TV show themes. So they are extrapolating that they can continue to sell music at that price or higher, aiming straight for the teen market. Since the current range of handsets are also MP3 players, it makes sense to charge whatever the market is willing to pay. It will be a short lived fad, as shocked parents are pushing for legislation all over Europe to limit the DL/ringtone industry.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Mod parent beige.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
well, one change is we have to add BS to get past the filters
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Hey! Is that copyrighted? Can you put it up somewhere so I can download it? Seriously! That is so retro it's delicious!
Oh, the irony. copying and pasting to shit on a copy and past post. Good work there, douche bag.
Virtually everyone in this forum says they would never pay $2.49 for a SONG. Duh! Nobody in this forum thinks you should have to pay for software either. Welcome to capitalism and open markets.
The price will settle where it optimizes revenue. If $2.49 is too high someone else will come along at $1.99 and steal sales away. Sprint is taking advantage of being the first in the market (in the US) to offer such a service. Personally I think they are being foolish -- given the whole DRM situation and the potential to lock-in customers who don't want to lose their music collection by switching phone carriers, I would think they would lowball the price. Further, they *should* make it more widely known that they provide software that allows users to transcode their MP3 files to put them on their phone as well. This is a feature of the service that few seem to know about. I suspect Sprint is not pushing that aspect because they want the revenue from song sales, and they don't want to alienate the labels. But frankly, if they could get everyone hooked^h^h^h^h^h^h accustomed to having a substantial music collection available at all times on their phone they will have created a large installed base and a strong incentive for customers to stay with Sprint.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Songs Overpriced?
Just type in 'free ringtone software' in google and you can find software to make your own ringtones for the whopping price of $0.00.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
comon, as i said in an earlier post, its not about the absolute cost. If you ./'s where so concerned about pay per use then you'd institute a frequent flyer discount at the local whorehouse.
But you dont
Because its too much effort.
If you want sex, RIGHT NOW, you will pay for it with cash instead of investing time in a relationship.
the reviewer is correct, it is all about the RIGHT NOW, he just simply doesn't understand that this is reality of the current generation of 'rich pickings' (young impressionables with lotsa disposable cash).
But worth the extra look. What happens to the cell phone companies when wimax networks are rolled out and people are using wireless voip instead of the cell phone network? The Carriers are looking at the music industry, and are concerned that their customers will flock to some sort of competetive service built on a network they can't control.
If cellphone songs are overpriced, I'm confident the market will work it out. People just won't buy. I personally don't see much of a point in having a cellphone / mp3 player combination, especially if there is no way to get the overpriced songs you order from your cell provider off of your phone and into a format that you can play on your PC or other portible music player. I'll stick with iTunes and my iPod. Oh and before anyone jumps on my case about the DRM on the songs you purchase from the iTMS, it's about the easiest stuff to get around on the planet. There are tools to strip the DRM and get a plain old AAC file or you can just burn them to CD and re-rip to mp3. Is there bit of a quality loss? Yes. Is it noticeable to me? No.
I personally like the idea of people presenting their political colors. You can strike up conversations with complete strangers and know exactly what to say in order to piss them off:-)
Woohoo!
Abstinence is a government conspiracy. www.SafeSexZone.co
**cracks knuckles**
People, everybody, seriously, who gives a shit ?
This is surely the most parsimonious, useless, effete, restless, cutesy little story ever on
No one gives a shit.
Let it go.
[The moment I'm wrong about this I'll feel bad about this post being snide and OT. Until then, mod it all the way down. Whatever.]
I agree that the price of ring tones is exorbant and the marketing is corrupt. They make it sound like you're getting the whole song and for the price, that is what anyone would expect.
There are a handful of tools out there that will allow you to make your own ring tones, however. Most of the programs are pay to register, but a few processes (not very well documented) will allow you to make the conversion to mp3 without wasting any of your own hard earned money.
My Moto RAZR V3 just simply needs to be plugged into a computer via standard USB MINI, and you can upload all the ring tunes you want, well only 9 megs worth. With the Motorolla software it even will edit and recompress the songs for you.
If you have a decent computer, which i dont you can do it completely over Bluetooth. It also syncs to my outlook contacts and calander, havent figured out the email sync yet though.
It is not that hard to put some research into a phone, and purchase a good one, with the features you want.
Maybe you have to pay 100 dollars instead of getting the free phone, but the convince and the hackability of the RAZR is well worth it.
Whats the big frigging deal, Jap have been paying as much as $4 per song, since the '80s! (3000-4000 yen CD with 10 tracks on it).
Anyone who pays for a cell phone ringer is severely retarded. Give the money to me instead and I'll kick you in the pants. You'll get the same result.
-Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
People pay 2.49 for ring tones?
Fools.
Besides wanting Bluetooth one of the reasons I got a Moto E815 is because of the transflash memory card. You can make a few easy modifications to the phone software and then enable copying/moving of files from the transflash, which means putting MP3s on that for free and using them as ringtones or whatever... All the instructions on how to do this for this phone and others are on howardforums.com if interested.
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
I sure love my bluetooth and just transfer any song I want to my phone....charge free. Long live P2P!!!!
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Yes, still...
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
I splice loops from songs *I* want and I don't pay a single penny for it.
I laugh whenever I see anyone else download crap (esp midi) at $1.99 a pop.
Suckers.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
I know people who pay for cell phone ringers. I won't, its a waste of money. When my phone rings, I cringe, every god damned time. I do not want it ruining my favorite tunes at the same time. I'll hear guns n roses, and think, "I should get that, whoever the fuck it is."
They are overpriced when the masses of sheep stop paying for them. I've never paid for one, nor will I. But currently, the masses are eating them alive. I personally hope they raise the price, and kill the market off, then I don't have to listen to some fucker play steely dan everytime his mommy needs to be picked up at the old lady hair salon.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
2 other people in my office apparently also have t-mobile phones, and we all apparently leave them on classic. I can usually tell from the volume whether it's mine or not, but I sometimes wish I wasn't too cheap to pay $2.50 for a ringtone that wasn't a ring and didn't sound like a rave club. I swear, they load phones with 50 different options of total crap to encourage you to buy a decent ringtone. But I am too cheap.
Same here. I have the Nokia 6255i, which came out early this year, and put a 1 gig MMC. I don't understand why all this is so new? Songs on a phone have been free for a while, provided you buy a phone and the USB cable for it. Why hasn't this phone recieved more press? Is it because it doesn't use iTunes?
-Valiss
As I see it, the reason ringtones are so popular is that they are being bought by teens on their parents credit. Giving a teen a cell phone is just like giving them your credit card that can only be used at a limited selection of stores. They happily run up hundreds of dollars in charges for going over their plan or buying add-ons like ringtones. The only reason they pay it off is that they're forced to by their parents. If the cell phone companies had to get their money directly from the teens, they'd never get paid. One way or another, the parents usually end up having to pay for a fair chunk of these extra garbage charges.
Put this on wikipedia, in the example threads section, please! It's quite an in-joke.
There seems to be a new trend lately. It seems more and more that we, as a society have to listen to (and put up with) other people's noice and bad taste in music. Have you noticed this? I have. As each year passes I hear more boom-boom bass sounds coming from some kid's little Honda shit box pumping out rap music. More and more I'm forced to listen to people talking on cell phones in restaurants and movie theatures. Motorcycle riders taking off their mufflers so that when I'm sleeping at night my selfish asshole neighbor can live out his Harley hog fantasies at 3am. And if that isn't enough we now have to listen to music coming from people's cell phones when a call is being received. I believe there are certain people in society that just aren't getting the attention their egos deserve. Where did these "Creatures of Aural Contamination" come from? And why are the rest of us forced to have to put with their noise and lousy tastes in music? I say we need a device that attaches to your ass and plays a ring tone made entirely of fart sounds when a bowel movement is imminent. This way I'll know exactly when the guy sitting next to me at the restaurant needs to take a dump!
> I was writing about this over three years ago!
;-)
Dupe!
I'll rip your music.
How do you know these things? Have you ever lived in a black (or white trash) community? If so, why do you think it was representative of other such communities? If not, who is telling you what is going on there?
People pay for ringtones? You mean those little song snippets, usually in midi form, that you can transfer to most phones for free with a USB cable?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
While I certainly would not pay $2.50 to download a song onto my mobile phone, I suspect that Sprint Nextel is aiming this service at the minority of customers that are willing to pay a premium price for instant access to desired content. Certainly, there are people out there that will pay a higher price to get what they want, when they want it. If there aren't enough of these consumers out there, then Sprint will either have to lower the price or be content with a premium service that generates limited revenue. I suspect that competition from other carriers will also result in lower prices.
I think it's reasonable to ask, why is there a $1.50 premium versus purchasing (more or less) the same product on iTunes? To sell songs, Apple had to pay for a big freakin' webfarm, and some big fat pipes to the Internet. Maybe a couple million for the webfarm, and I think you can get an Internet OC3 for less than $15,000 per month. Not too bad.
Sprint Nextel, on the other hand, has much larger costs to support the delivery of this content to mobile phones. (All telecommunications services are traditionally very capital intensive.) Before they could even launch their CDMA network, Sprint Nextel had to pay billions of dollars for spectrum licenses in order to operate. For the CDMA network, Sprint has somewhere in the neighborhood of 25,000 cell towers. The equipment at all those towers had to be upgraded to support 3G 1xRTT data service, and it has to be upgraded again to support EV-DO high-speed data service. And since EV-DO is an overlay technology, each cell tower requires an additional T1 line (at a minimum) to support EV-DO data service.
I believe that Sprint Nextel currently spends about $4 billion per year on capital expenditures to support the voice and data services on the CDMA network. (This information is typically available in the quarterly presentations made to investors by the company). Divided by the approximately 25 million users of the CDMA network, this means that Sprint is currently spending about $160 per subscriber per year to upgrade the network. In addition to all of this cap-ex, Sprint also has to pay the monthly recurring charges on all those thousands of T1 lines, as well as pay interest on the billions of dollars of debt that was incurred by purchasing the original spectrum licenses.
We would all like for high-speed Internet access to be available everywhere, all the time, at low, low prices. Unfortunately, it currently takes a lot of money to make those types of services available to large numbers of people. Certainly technology improvements (and competition) will continue to drive down the cost of providing these services.
If you don't like the prices, don't use the service.
In addition to the cable, did you also buy the software you needed to access the goddamn phone? I discovered, the hard way, that Motorola phones don't exactly mount like a flash drive in Microsoft Windows.
The "driver" isn't even a motorola product. As far as I can tell the only actual driver lets you use the phone as a usb modem. You have to buy Moto PhoneTools to do any of the other stuff, but I haven't even gotten it to work yet. All I wish is that the damn thing would mount as a flash drive. I don't really need to depend on a special phone program to shrink and recode pictures and tunes. I wish we had the freedom to do it ourselves.