Just nine weeks after Japan’s KDDI launched its MP3 ringtone service, dubbed “EZ Chaku-uta Full”, the telco has sold 2 million songs to subscribers, despite being four times the price of a MIDI ringtone. Interestingly, full tunes cost two or three times the price of an iTunes song, which means Japan has the reverse trend of the one in most countries where full MP3 songs go for less than a dollar while MIDI ringtones can cost up to three dollars. The market seems to be taking off, but it would be dangerous to extrapolate to the European and North American markets, which have markedly different content structures.
The Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers, and Publishers (JASRAC) now gets seven percent of its revenue from rights associated to mobile music, more than for networked karaoke – a comparison that would be ridiculous anywhere but Japan. On the intellectual property rights front, “Japan’s record companies like Sony, BMG, EMI, and Warner Music formed a consortium called Label Mobile to handle all rights for mobile MP3 licensing. Though ostensibly non-exclusive, the consortium essentially became the monopoly content provider to the carrier for full tunes.” It’s good that they’re offering the music, but very few people are comfortable with the record labels having a monopoly…
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