Yesterday, I received an email informing me that UC Press is having their annual online sale from now to the end of next month. I ordered ten books during the sale last year and I couldn’t resist this year either. Today I ordered, amongst a few others, the classic Writing Culture, Fabian’s Out of Our Minds, Rabinow’s Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco and Cooper and Stoler’s Tensions of Empire. Good deals on good books, IMHO. You need a “sale code” which you get by registering for their email newsletter, or their RSS feeds. Just FYI.<—a477250e0076a79315685d9fc2208e75—>

Seems like Apple’s recently announced ringtone service is increasing media coverage of the ringtone market.
A Baffling New Phenomenon: Customized Ringtones – New York Times
I’ve already explained my personal position on iTunes ringtones. Interesting that most tech journalists should be of the opposite opinion.
Of course, my position is based on a licensing model for the use of musical recordings. In this case, I have no idea how those licenses are handled. It is, in fact, quite possible that artists are not gaining anything from ringtone sales and/or that musicians cannot prevent their music to be transformed into a ringtone. But the abstract model makes sense, to me. Licensing music for use in a ringtone should probably follow similar guidelines to music licensing for advertising. What Pogue and others seem to be forgetting is that music is often used as an identity symbol. In youth culture, such symbols are quite important. Paying 2-3$ for a distinctive ringtone sounds like a decent deal and the convenience aspect is quite high. There are many free ringtones available and, as is often the case, the free items drive sales of paid content.
It might be relevant to look into what the Future of Music Coalition has to say about ringtones. They’ll be in Washington DC in a few days.