Future of Mobile Phone Ringtones

It was expected to have died a natural death of a fad. But by the looks of it, it is all but ready to breathe its last. Mobile phone ring tones are not just here to stay. They are here to evolve. The future structure and operation of this industry will bear little resemblance to the past and present as well for that matter, with the way the industry is experiencing rapid metamorphosis. From the basic sequential tones at different frequencies called monotones, to the polyphonic discovery of 2003 that with its greater permutations and combinations offers snazzier better quality sound. And finally to the more personalized version of music or real tones which are original pieces of music and lyrics for the more ambitious; looking for having personal compositions of sorts.

And they say it's the ambitious that dictate the future. Ring tone DJ's are the next most talked about thing on the music circuit with numerous websites encouraging users to turn their interests into a profession and telling them how to do it. These websites list the top few ring tones for a period of time and invite ring tone users to rate the ring tones. Many of them even have free downloadable software(s) to mix songs and create one's own ring tone that could be listed on the website. The United Kingdom market has already been the first to test the waters for ring tone DJ competition followed by local awards, according to local sources.

The drawing together of cultures globally is only lending itself to this burgeoning industry. Bollywood with its wide reach has become a popular theme for mobile phone ring tones across countries, and International pop artists music enjoys its fair share of popularity in India as well. These ring tone artists have downloadable ring tone clips of their songs posted on the websites, in an attempt to prevent any kind of public infringement of their work. Heaps of websites cater to the specific linguistic demand of users with their palette of ring tones in various regional languages.

With the growing popularity of downloadable songs in various formats such as MP3, WAV, WMA, et al, the music industry is forced to deal with the issue of piracy on yet another front. Although service providers charge their users for downloading a ring tone the first time round, there is no way to lock the forwarding of that ring tone to other users. There have been reports of retailers offering bundled ring tones along with the handsets at the time of sale, without actually paying royalty for the same. The presence of pre – loaded chips, under – reporting of downloads from operators of websites and retention of higher revenues by service providers are just some of the problems that have begun to surface within the industry. Add to this the ready availability of sound editing softwares that allow for easy manipulation of music. There have been reports of some mobile phone giants investing in such softwares for the larger interest of their users, thereby giving them the creative freedom to personalize their ringtones.

A substantial amount of blogs and web articles have already been dedicated to the mobile phone ring tone industry. Ring tone DJ's and artists having already arrived, and it won't be long before industry awards and professional courses for ring tone compositions come around. What remains to be seen is how the music industry tackles this yet another form of music piracy and which next tune would be sweet music to the capitalist's ears.