The global ringtone market is estimated to develop by only USD 5.2 billion on an annual basis in comparison to what it accounted in 2006 as more than 10 percent of the USD 32.3 billion across the world. The market analysts have discovered a crazy trend growing amongst consumers keen on music entertainment for their mobile handsets, along with many ringtone artists becoming fancy for mobile users increasingly.
Many websites have Top Ten ringtone chartbuster listed on their portals coupled with various popular compositions by international song artists that can be well used as ringtones. The Crazy Frog ringtone was the first ringtone to have emerged in the market for mobile phones, and also came out as a winner in Britain pop charts.
The music industry is celebrating its increasing market value due to growing popularity and craze amongst the youth. As per the industry sources, the contribution of hip-hop fraternity alone accounts for over half of the all downloaded ringtones globally. Many artists, including 50 Cent, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Mariah Carey and many more are quite keen on composing ringtones of their popular numbers. According to professionals and market experts, ringtones will outshine the music industry in terms of the former’s steadily growing sales, since royalties collected through mobile phone ringtones would outdo the sales of CDs and would be the major source of income generation for music companies across the world.
Not only this, even manufacturers are on the surge of releasing swankier models with modern operating systems that can play ringtones in almost all formats available free of charge for the mobile freaks. People, who have been using polyphonic hip hop tones till date, are now all set to have room for fans of country music, pop music, rock song, Hollywood/Bollywood hits and other genres.
However, the recent issue of piracy has disturbed the industry largely, with recurrent disputes reported amongst songwriters and film producers over royalty fees. Songwriters only receive a one-time fee for their own compositions and will also not gain much acclaim in the future for their work.
After SMS, ringtones stand as the second most known data service fetching revenues of about USD 4.95 billion. Though monophonic and polyphonic ringtones have not been able to contribute much to the sales revenue, but 3G ringtones have emerged out as a winner in the music ringtone industry. Basically, ringtones are more in demand to get them personalised in one’s mobile handset, which also provides a unique identity to the mobile user as compared to original music track. The latest evolution in the ringtone sector has been video ringtones that actually enhances the concept of personalisation with the help of visual images and audio tracks.
Jamba and its Crazy Frog ringtone have been successfully ruling the ringtone market, without making much difference to the mobile operators who could otherwise mint plenty of revenue through these ringtones. However, key players like record labels and TV studios would not be repeating this mistake again and utilize these services with the rising competition for revenue generation.
