RIP Polyphonic Ringtone Market?

The Music Media Watch newsletter has a bit of a eulogy to the polyphonic ringtone market, from a Japanese perspective but I think it applies generally. The general tone of the piece is that the party lasted longer than expected, but it’s finally winding up — as evidenced by the restructuring, reorganizing and layoffs within the industry. Three points are made about the polyphonic ringtone industry… First, that it “marked the first time that a mass-market industry for selling music to consumers was developed completely independent of major record labels”. Similar to SMS, the ringtone industry developed despite apathy by the established industry (telcos, labels). The apathy from the labels is to be expecte since they don’t get royalties from polyphonic ringtones — although that doesn’t necessarily make the industry evil as they are wont to imply. Second, “polyphonic ringtones put the power of production into the hands of real musicians and music creators, who were paid to create their own renditions of popular songs…This work requires a good ear for music and a strong sense of arrangement”. I’m not a musician so I can’t comment on this, except to say that my efforts at even monophonic ringtones were abysmal. Finally, “polyphonic ringtones took full advantage of one of the key benefits of MIDI-like formats: small file size”, which is important when the vast majority of people are not on all-you-can-eat data plans. Personally, I’d make a fourth point that it was the first mass mobile content market, despite some massive issues.

What next?: Still, the polyphonic ringtone business is winding down, and content vendors which have done so well out of it are looking for a replacement business — which isn’t straightforward when they suddenly have to get licenses from labels. “After years of looking for the Next Big Thing, the companies that made the most from ringtones are starting to accept that there doesn’t appear to be anything of a comparable scale on the horizon.” While this could be disputed by some, remember that these are off-portal companies with new brand names. If they can hold out until the mobile web picks up enough that off-portal content sales become viable they could adapt and survive.

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