A short piece mentioning a new iTunes-based way to create 30-second ringtones from purchased tracks.
iPhone ringtones will cost you – Crave : The gadget blog
My very personal opinion: this might really be a move in the most appropriate direction assuming the money really goes to right owners (and, hopefully, to musicians).
This may come as a surprise to some who read some of my posts here. But paying for ringtones makes a lot of sense in the specific logic which surrounds music as a business.
Music itself is not a commodity. But some commodities are based on music. A track can be bought and it does make a lot of sense, especially if musicians are compensated as part of that deal. A ringtone is a different type of commodity from a downloaded track. It’s associating a musical excerpt with “customization.” It’s using music as a symbol of identity. It’s branding self through sound.
The same way music used in advertising should definitely result in a clear agreement, most likely with a financial reward for the artist whose music is used in the commercial, music used as personal branding should result in some gain on the part of the musician who created the music. In fact, I personally hope that musicians can opt out of the ringtone-making process. Not that such opting-out would be very effective (many ringtones can be done with any MP3) but, as a musician and an observer of musicians, I easily can imagine the frustration some people may feel from having their music transformed into a ringtone.
This may sound like tortured logic to those who think strictly in good/bad distinctions. I’m not saying that ringtones are necessarily good or necessarily bad for musicians. I’m saying that listening to music and using music as a “status symbol” are two very different thing.
The term “licensing” is particularly strong, here. I personally find it perfectly reasonable for a musician to sell music specifically for the purpose of being used on cellphones or in family videos. I also think there’s a need for “royalty-free” music banks, such as the ones associated with Apple’s GarageBand. If this new iTunes to ringtone process works as advertised, it in effect creates an easy licensing model for consumers of music-based sound icons to pay back musicians for the creation of the music on which these sound icons are based. A similar logic to that used in most licensing programs under frequent discussion: Creative Commons, GNU Public License, Copyright. In the same logic, public domain works and those under the less restrictive Creative Commons variants should be usable as ringtones without the licensing process. It’s unfortunate that Apple has no mechanism for these. But it’s also understandable, in the iPhone context.
I should really dig up recent numbers but I read a few years ago that ringtones were worth around 3 billion USD while the recording industry as a whole (excluding ringtones, apparently) was worth 30 billion. I keep musing about this idea that ringtones may be worth 10% of the whole recording industry and that, if said recording industry were to wake up, it might realize that a lot of money can be made on things different from selling the privilege to listen to a “tune.”

This post represents my own (Alexandre Enkerli’s) personal views and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone at CriticalWorld.<—adb9f2cb44d2840fd025a29ff88330b6—>