The profitable ring-tone market may well be entering a new stage in its development if a report in the Wall Street Journal is to be believed. The ring tone market is now estimated to be worth over $2.2 billion globally, and it is not just the owners of existing music that are benefiting.
The journal reports that a new industry is growing up with record label style companies - complete with A&R departments - that deal exclusively in the ring tones business. Meanwhile songwriters, who have lost work because the advertising industry increasingly uses existing music rather than commissioning original jingles or soundtracks, are now making their living creating original ring-tones.
Thomas
Dolby, best known for his early eighties hit ‘She Blinded
Me With Science’, is reportedly now earning a living in this area, while the ring-tone division of French media company
Lagardere SCA has reportedly recruited former **A Tribe Called
Quest man Q-Tip** to create original music for phones to play.
And the Journal reckons that those artists making ring-tones could be on to a winner providing the ring-tone industry stays strong.
They can recoup much quicker because of the more or less non-existent manufacturing and distribution costs, and popular ring-tones tend to have a long shelf life.