Ring Tones Will Save the Music Industry 271
tabdelgawad writes "Well, not quite, but according to Jay A. Samit, senior vice president for new media at music label EMI Group PLC, quoted in this Washington Post article, "This is huge. This is the largest growth area for music companies and our artists". The article goes on to prove two facts we already know: that the music industry is greedy (already asking for a bigger slice of this pie!) and that the porn industry is a prime innovator in marketing and technology :-)"
Re:I dunno, but maybe... (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't know about you, but when I find new cool techno music I throw a party.
Don't Hold Your Breath (Score:5, Insightful)
Approximately 50 percent of Europeans under the age of 30 have downloaded ring tones, according to Stonefield, who believes the U.S. market is ripe for similar growth. "There is no way that kind of distribution is going to be held back; it is a real social trend," he said.
Yes, it is a social trend, but not a U.S. one.
Most of the fads we see tend to have some obvious -- if obnoxious -- logic to it. Macarena? Catchy and annoying as all get-out. Pokemon? Competition, community, kids running around saying dumb things (which is precisely what kids are supposed to do). Micro RC cars? Cute and disturbingly entertaining to everyone but our employers and cats. I could go on for quite some time but because I wish to annoy you, the gracious reader, as little as possible, I'll get right to the point.
What do frickin' ringtones offer?
"Oh, hey! Cool, Rock Me Amadaeus as a ringtone! Sweet!
This is not a U.S. phenomenon and it won't ever be a U.S. phenominon. I'm not trying to imply that the United States is somehow more sophisticated, I'm suggesting that Americans tend to view cellphones ringing about as enjoyable as listening to a car alarm going off. And not because they're boring, monotone and tedious, either. We dislike the phone because it represents an interruption, rendered jarringly, like an audial ICQ popup (though I'm told they don't do that anymore).
Again, from the article:
"This is huge," said Jay A. Samit, senior vice president for new media at music label EMI Group PLC. "This is the largest growth area for music companies and our artists."
This is a sign that companies are literally scraping the bottom of the barrel, not the bleeding edge of the Next Great Thing.
Re:What's the difference? (Score:2, Insightful)
Then:
Now:
Ah Yes... (Score:3, Insightful)
After all, did you ever hear an original ringtone...?
I wonder how long this will last (Score:3, Insightful)
Ringtones that play a melody are horrible... (Score:2, Insightful)
This time... (Score:4, Insightful)
one non-annoying word (ok, setting, really) (Score:5, Insightful)
vibrate
Re:Don't Hold Your Breath (Score:2, Insightful)
What do frickin' ringtones offer?
They have been very popular in europe and are now on their way out
This is not a U.S. phenomenon and it won't ever be a U.S. phenominon. I'm not trying to imply that the United States is somehow more sophisticated, I'm suggesting that Americans tend to view cellphones ringing about as enjoyable as listening to a car alarm going off. And not because they're boring, monotone and tedious, either. We dislike the phone because it represents an interruption, rendered jarringly, like an audial ICQ popup (though I'm told they don't do that anymore).
And you don't think anyone finds it anoying over here? And therefore people won't like it? Mmmmkay.
As a lot of other new mobile phone trends they started with teenagers using it, and then grew onto the general public (like SMS). The only thing stopping this thing from anoying you too within the next 6-12 months might be that most US phones propably don't support custom ringing signals, since most of them are ancient crap (or so i hear
Re:Are you all idiots??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Legally, maybe; morally, definitely not piracy.
Mega Bass cellphones (Score:3, Insightful)
So we need subwoofers for cell phones. Or at least speakers that can go down to 100Hz or so, to get rid of that tinny sound. Of course, you need some high notes so people can find the cellphone; with nothing but bass, the wavelength is too long for localization.
Re:I dunno, but maybe... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Don't Hold Your Breath (Score:3, Insightful)
I want two things from my phone: 1) For it to work. 2) For it to be as little inconvenience as possible to carry around.
If I were the sort of person to carry a PDA around all the time anyway, attaching a phone to my PDA would make sense. Ditto for forest workers who always have a GPS on hand. Since I carry neither, for me the perfect phone would be the size of a typical earring, and worn as one. Or perhaps a sub-dermal device in my jaw.
I don't want to carry around a big honkin' video screen all day, just so I can see a choppy picture of the person I'm talking to (if the happen to own a phone on the same service network).
Fuck the industry, whos going to save music? (Score:3, Insightful)
'Nuff said.
Fair Use? (Score:4, Insightful)
In such cases of course, the excerpted piece of otherwise copyrighted material must only be a small percentage of the original work.
This allows one newspaper report to quote a few lines from a competing publication without fear of breaching their copyright.
So what's wrong with the claim that turning 10 seconds or so of a top-40 song into a ring-tone isn't also covered by this "fair use" exclusion because it's only a tiny percentage of the original work and it's *reporting* that someone has called your cellphone?
It would certainly be an interesting sharkfight if someone decided to test it out in the courts
Re:I don't think so: (Score:3, Insightful)
If I am at your house and use your phone for 500 minutes, how much does it cost you? Nothing (beyond the money you already spent to have active service).
You see, in many other countries, there is a per minute fee, on top of the monthly fees, to use your land line phone. Given the insane prices of local phone service, it is no surprise that mobile phone rates (especially the early days of digital networks) looked very reasonable to them, and completely outragous to us.
As for the notion that we like big out of gluttony, I think you are overgeneralizing. Small cars are popular in Europe because of their narrow, treacherous streets, many of which were laid down before cars existed. Most midwestern US cities became heavilly populated after cars existed, and grew up around big roads. I own a massive Crown Victoria, but if I lived in Europe or Japan, I would want a little Mini or something, if I owned a car at all.
Likewise, we have big yards because real estate is so much more cheap and abundant than elsewhere. I would need to be a multi-millionare to own a house as big as mine in Japan.
How we dress? Have you been following Japanese fashion at all? The most excessive "fashion slave" in the US would become exhausted trying to keep up with changing J-pop trends.
"A smaller phone is not very likely to be perceived as being better, here in the US. Put some beazzler jewels on them, and a "Polo" label on them and then they'll move."
A stroll through Best Buy proves you wrong almost immediately. Small fold up phones are almost always double the price of a big blocky one with the same features. We put a very high value on small phones, and the only time people buy color bezels is when groups of them get identical phones from work, and want to be able to tell everybody's phones apart at a glance.
Personalized Ringtones Can Be Useful (Score:3, Insightful)
Assuming you're not in a space where noise would be a problem, having a personalized ringtone helps users distinguish their ringing phones from others'.
Whenever I'm in a public space and I hear the "Nokia" ring, I often see 4 or 5 people going for their phones. If those had people personalized their ringtones, they might have been able to save themselves a bit of mad scrambling.
(FWIW, when I'm in public, my cellphone is set to vibrate. No confusion for me.)
Am I the only one... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's been possible for a LONG time (Score:3, Insightful)
The first GSM mobile phone I ever owned (back in 1999), a Nokia 3210, had a ring tone composer which I could use to send ring tones I composed to my friends who had compatible phones. Newer 3xxx (e.g. 3310/3350, etc.) models even have the ability to resend tones that have been received. Heck, if this isn't (an admittedly primitive) P2P network built on top of GSM, I don't know what one is. With SMS chat services, getting the tones you want is not too difficult.
But then again, it seems that the United States is somewhat backwards when it comes to cellular telephony for some reason. We've been doing this in the Philippines for at least five years almost.
Odd thing for a third world country like us to have market penetration rates for cellular phones approaching that of the wealthiest European nations. Heck, I see street vendors here who have GSM mobiles!
Re:but will you have to pay royalties (Score:2, Insightful)
That would be a good thing. I'd love to see the idiots in movie theaters who don't put ther phones on silent/vibra mode pay big $$$ for spoiling my movie
Re:And then... (Score:1, Insightful)
They used to be there before Sony got in.