Download your Livin' La Vida Loca ring for your cellphone
I think cellphone ringing should be banned from public places and everyone forced to carry a vibrating phone but I doubt if teenagers and the music industry will be very agreeable to this idea. According to this New York Times story (registration required) music industry officials like Jay Samit, a senior vice president at EMI, see big dollar signs in this emerging US market:
Music and wireless executives cite figures like $1.5 billion - the predicted total of ring-tone sales in Europe this year, according to Strand Consult, a Danish firm - the way they once tossed around stratospheric projections of dot-com revenue. At industry events in the United States like the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association trade show last month in Las Vegas, the clamor over the ring-tone business, said those who attended, has reached a fever pitch.
"It feels like we rewound to 1995," said Richard Conlon, vice president of BMI, the music licensing concern, which has been working with recording labels, wireless providers and third-party businesses that sell ring tones to negotiate the complex web of publishing rights. "It's almost like a do-over."
...Mr. Samit of EMI offered another reason for the focus on cellphones, saying that since August 2001 there have been more wireless handsets in use in this country than portable CD players.
Ring tones are just the start of a trend that Mr. Conlon and others in the wireless industry said they hoped would result in greater use of the medium for the enjoyment of music. As more advanced phones are introduced that play higher-fidelity sound, and as the mobile network technology improves, they want to condition consumers to download entire songs.