The latest trend in the market is to download a special ringtone to your mobile phone so that it can play a pop song that can be used as a mobile ringtone. The European and Asian markets have seen the most sales in the last three years. Ringtones have overtaken CD singles in terms of generating more revenue for the music industry. Song artists are making more money through ringtones than their CDs. On top of this, ringtone sales have also dwarfed legal Internet download services, including Apple’s iTunes, which brings in around $100 million a year worldwide.
Teenagers, in particular, are more excited about the ringtones set on their mobile phones, which has now become nothing short of a fashion statement for them. Even the sound quality is constantly being improved with the latest mobile phones supporting polyphonic playback that allow music clips to be used as ringtones, known as True Tones. Now one can even own a short sound clip of their favorite artist on the mobile phone.
This calls for huge market opportunities for mobile operators and record labels. After paying a certain amount of royalties, you can even make a ringtone of a pop song of your choice. For true tones, record labels are required to license the master recording. Record labels, on the other hand, will license master recording only to trusted partners, such as mobile networks. Many dubious companies that dominated the ringtone business by offering pornographic phone lines would be eliminated. Verizon Wireless has successfully partnered with BMG and EMI in the US, while T-Mobile has also strategically partnered with Sony and Universal in Europe.
True tones have also made the biggest profits for mobile operators and record labels lately. This further indicates a new and larger market for music downloads to load onto mobile phones. With the new 3G networks in the industry, mobiles have become much smarter and playing music is just another cup of tea for all music lovers.
According to the Mobile Data Association (MDA), mobile ringtone sales are set to increase 60% this year. It has been found that young people keep their mobile phones updated with the latest soundtracks on a regular basis and find it too boring to adjust to songs that become old. However, the music industry has been warned by trade publication Mobile Messaging Analyst that it cannot simply rely on the ringtone business for revenue rather than, and that the ringtone market will not overtake the CD singles for some time.
Although piracy has steadily decimated the record label industry, the ringtone business is still showing healthy growth to attract more consumers and more revenue. To some extent, it is helping the music industry to recover from the losses suffered in the past, with the growing passion for ringtones among children and teenagers, who have led the music industry sales by themselves. alone, making the largest contribution in history.