Everyone who owns a mobile phone which supports ringtones knows it: you can get the latest songtunes as a small (midi) file on your mobile phone. Nothing wrong with that. Many companies are making big bucks with it. Well guess what happens next...
The same forces that took on file-swapping companies Napster and MP3.com are quietly setting their sights on what some regard as the next digital copyright battle: selling ring tones for cell phones. |
Selling ring tones is big business in Europe and Asia, where hundreds of companies offer snippets of popular music to replace the prepackaged tones used to alert someone to a call. More than $300 million in ring tones were sold in Japan last year. Nokia estimates it will make billions selling ring tones by the end of 2005.
The record companies say that people are 'exploiting' music... Well I don't know what the hell they are thinking, but ringtones are at most 10/15 seconds of a complete song, and they want performance rights for that?? For those 15 seconds? Looks like they smell $$$ again
Source: ZDNet
