USA Today has a piece on mastertones and how the top ringtones now outsell the top singles, which is nothing we didn’t know but there are some interesting figures for the US.
“In the week ending Nov. 12, Akon’s Smack That was the No. 1 mastertone, with 164,000 sold. It was No. 2 on the digital chart after selling 104,000 downloads. BeyoncĂ©’s Irreplaceable sold 124,000 mastertones and 79,000 downloads.”
Mastertones now represent 86% of weekly ringtone sales and polyphonic tones make up 12%, which are moving towards seasonal ringtones and movie and game themes. “BMI, a trade organization that distributes royalties to 300,000 member songwriters, composers and music publishers, projects U.S ringtone revenues will surpass $600 million in 2006, up from $500 million last year, $245 million in 2004 and $68 million in 2003. Global sales rose 40% in the past year to $3.5 billion, accounting for 10% of the music market, according to the London-based ARC Group, which forecasts skyrocketing growth into 2008, when sales should exceed $5.2 billion.”
The article states that “a key difference between polyphonics and mastertones lies in profit splits. The former made money for carriers, publishers and songwriters, but not performers”, which isn’t really true. The performers of the ringtones, the people who made them, received compensation. Now however, “artists who don’t write their own songs get a piece of the action. It’s a good revenue generator for the record business”.
The article is based on (or at least, coincides with) a report from Nielsen Mobile that they are launching Nielsen RingScan, “to monitor the rapidly expanding United States ringtone market and issue a weekly report of Polyphonic, Master, and Voice ringtone sales” (press release). This will be used as the basis for the Billboard Hot RingMasters Chart, the top 20 mastertones. Nielsen Mobile has also added Sprint and Boost as sources for its data collection, and USA Today states that “RingScan will track more than 80% of U.S. ringtone sales”. RCR News states that this is “the second carrier agreement for Nielsen Mobile; in September the company inked a similar partnership with Verizon Wireless”. I assume there’s also deals with ringtone vendors.
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