Now that the market is worth over UK£70 million (€105 million), KPMG are compiling a fortnightly chart listing the top 20 ringtones downloaded to the UK’s 45 million mobile phones. The chart will be officially recognised by the British Phonographic Industry and published in the trade news paper Music Week.
Even scarier, some sources report that ringtones now account for 10% of the global music market – or US$3,000,000,000 (€2.45 billion). There an interesting contradiction here. On the one hand, the music industry say that it’s customers are quite happy to pay for a ringtone sample from a single, yet on the other hand the same labels claim that the public won’t pay to download an actual music track, instead preferring to rob artists. Could this have been because of the easy availability of licensed ringtones to buy as opposed to a complete lack of legitimate music services in some markets, such as Europe?
Incidentally, it’s a race between Eamon’s “I Don’t Want You Back” and Britney Spear’s “Everytime” to be the top spot on the first chart. Contrast this to Al Martino’s “Here in My Heart” which topped the first singles chart in 1952.
Too bad panda-headed Digital Lifestyle’s favourites Super Smart don’t really have a look in.
Music Week
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Fraser Lovatt
Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.
Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.
At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.
After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.
These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?
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