Saturday 30 August 2008

Ringtone cashcows

Where are you now, oh mighty crazy frog?  And hands up how many spent £2, buying that particular ringtone when it first came out?

In today's permanently-on-all-you-can-consume menageric society, you can download a quality realtone (as opposed to the nasty plasticy monotones we had to endure up until a couple of years ago) for the pricely sum of £4.50p - a single download.  Or if you take out a subscription, for £4.50p ($8.46c), you can download 3 ringtones of your choice - from one particular website  - per week.

That's just over eight full music track downloads, from the itunes store or two cheese flavoured quarter pounders, for 30 seconds of sound. Or to to indulge in bit of mediocre statistical  shuffling, it would equate to an approximate hourly rate of £540, per hour.  Been paid that would easily put you in a reasonable gross weekly income position of about £21,600 - and you wouldn't even have to worry about been a footballer just getting your boots on the first rung of the ladder.  But don't get me started on the current crop of the national team.

So, at a bare minimum we can say that the most popular operator of this form of media outgassing, gets a minimum of £21,600+ per week by consumers downloading 30 seconds worth of a song or songs. Not bad, for ringtone dealing. 

Are we mad?  Many companies out there obviously think we are.  To the ringtone industry, we are nothing more than gullible "ringtone cashcows!"

And for those out there still not aware of how to go about creating a ringtone, I was going to do a quick brief little piece.  But luckily, swivelled across the splendid article below, on wired.com. Which needs as much additional explaining as teaching Mr Bean how to be a court jester.

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/commentary/listeningpost/2006/02/70150

But here's something i cobbled together [cackle]. At the very least it would see if your ears are cleared!

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