Ringtones decibel increases for cellcos

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: For music companies and mobile telephony service providers, revenues from ringtones began as a trickle but have now gained momentum. With around 20-25% of India’s 56 million mobile subscribers paying to have caller ring-back tones and ringtones, and with a monthly growth rate of 20-25%, according to industry estimates, they have become one of the most popular applications. "More and more subscribers are ready to pay Rs 30 per month for caller ringback tones with Rs 15 for the initial download payment and Rs 9 for each ringtone download," said a Kolkata-based spokesperson for Airtel.

If the statistics given by mobile operators are to be believed, Reliance users download 7.5 lakh tones per day and Airtel users 3.5 lakh. The numbers show that value-added services are maturing. After the popular SMS, ringtones have become the most widely used value-added application.

In an SMS, it is the mobile telephony service provider that controls the entire operation. In ringtones and caller ringback tones, three parties have to cooperate to provide the service.

The music companies provide the content or the ringtones themselves, aggregators who take care of issues like copyrights and formatting the music, and finally the phone company.

Handset manufacturers are expected to become the fourth partner soon, what with Ericsson tying up with Napster and Motorola planning to offer the iTunes music service.

In India, operators introduced ringtones three years ago, and ringback tones (Airtel calls them Hello tunes and Hutch caller tunes) were launched around last August. Said Mandar Thakur, GM of Soundbuzz India, a company which has a range of interests as an aggregator and online music market, “The coming of ringback tones brought a new revolution in the value-added service market. When they were first launched in the Indian market, I don’t think either the operators or any of us had anticipated the kind of explosive growth that has happened."

Mr Thakur said that Soundbuzz alone contributed close to 2.25 million ring tones per month to the mobile subscribers. These kind of figures have convinced all the mobile operators that ringtones and ringback tones are a goldmine if exploited properly.

Said Naveen Chopra, VP, corporate marketing at Hutchison India: “In a way my ringtones or caller tunes represent my personality and my choice of music. Here, the mobile operators have been able to successfully personalise the services."