Research And Markets has issued a report claiming that record labels will take over from mobile companies as producers of ringtones because of the shift to realtones which require licenses from the labels. “Because ringtones and digital songs offer fundamentally different value sets, they are different product categories, each of which will be characterised by different pricing, promotion and positioning: the fact that a real music ringtone is simply an excerpt of a digital song is irrelevant from a marketing perspective.” I wonder for how long labels will simply snip a piece out of the single? It’s common practice for bands/DJs/ artists to record different versions of a song — it would be simple enough for one of those versions to be for a ringtone.
The report goes on to say that because labels will cosy up to the carriers “the outlook for pure-play mobile content aggregators is bleak”, covertones will stay as a viable part of the market and “the create-your-own ringtone market will be limited to a niche because of the increasing insistence by labels that retailers and mobile operators use DRM and also the roll-out of authorised, paid-for ringtone editing tools which will begin appearing on label-approved online music stores”.
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