American collecting society BMI is predicting that US ringtone sales this year will surpass $600 million, which would be $100 million up from last year. The forecast is based on the growth of the sector in the last seven quarters.
BMI VP Of Business Development Richard Conlon told reporters: "We see the market maturing in 2006 with growth fuelled by an increase in multimedia handsets and more aggressive marketing by wireless carriers. We believe that the market will grow by 20% for the ringtone sector alone in 2006. We also see 2006 as the make or break year for the ringback tone market, which is still in the novelty phase in the United States. Additional music-based revenues should be realized from mobile subscription music services, which have just begun US roll out."
Ring tones have, of course, always been better business for the publishers and composers that BMI represent than the record labels, given that the latter only earn a royalty when real recordings are used in the ringtone, while the former earn a royalty whatever version of a track is used, providing the collection society can track purchases. BMI has said that it has now tracked and processed 360,000,000 ringtones since it started monitoring the market back in 2001.