Music Industry Struggles to Get Cell phone?s Numbers :: essays research papers

euphony Industry Struggles to Get Cell phones Numbers      on that point is a new trend b promiseing together cell phones and digital euphony called ringtones. These ringtones are customized ringers that a customer can download in a flash to their cell phone. This business has seen quick and expansive growth in the last(prenominal) 2 years and is expected to grow for at least a couple more years. Initially cell phones came with just a fistful of default ringers the user could choose from, but now they are adequate to download digitalized versions of their favorite song. Some new phone technologies even part with the ringers to include actual samples of real euphony including vocals.      The ringtone grocery is a plastered competitor with the online music market. The ringtone version of rapper 50-Cents song In Da Club actually outsold digital sales of the song. This is impressive because this ringtone was merely 30 seconds, had no vo cals, and priced at nearly two dollars was twice the price of downloading the full digital song from Apples iTunes digital music store. Customers of Sprint bought 500,000 copies of Beyones Crazy in Love at $2.50 a musical composition. Estimates of world wide sales claim that ringer sales in 2003 spended nearly $3 billion. According to BMI, the royalty collection group, the American market was between $66 and $68 million in 2003 and is expected to reach $240 million in just the first 6 months of 2004.     The licensing of music to be turned into a ringer poses several legal issues. All parties snarled in originally creating the music must agree to have their music digitally recreated as a ringer. The article reports that many a(prenominal) songs, especially in the rap industry, involve many collaborators which further extends the licensing dilemma. The hit song yea by Usher took over 6 months to reach ringtones because one of the many parties involved held o ut in tough negotiations. While the major online ringtone publishers face these legal battles, there is another ethical issue that arises concerning the grey-market operators that provide gilded versions of hits without licensing. Further, this is legal discussion as to who should be getting the bigger piece of the royalties involving the ringtones. The publishing companies turning out the digital ringers typically get 10% of the sale price or 10 cents while the master ring tones that include actual song samples bring in nearly 30 cents.