Ringtones drown out CD singles
By Adam Sherwin, Media Reporter

Ringtones generated about £120 million of business during 2004, according to figures released today by the financial services company KPMG. Sales of CD singles continued to plummet, with recorded sales worth £55 million, down by 15 per cent.

With digital replicas of hits now available as “truetones”, the ringtones market is set to outperform CD singles and the nascent online download market in 2005. The most popular ringtone of 2004 was the dance hit Babycakes by 3 of a Kind, a song created on a bedroom computer by Marc Portelli, an East London teenager.

Children pay up to £4 for the latest ringtones. Urban and R&B hits dominate, with Usher, Eric Prydz and American rappers D12 among the Top Ten of 2004.

But ringtones present a challenge to Britain’s rock bands. There is not a single guitar-based hit in the year’s Top 20. Music critics claim that pop singles such as Britney Spears’s Toxic are being created around a simple nagging riff with ringtone sales in mind.

Ringtones have given a new lease of life to musical curiosities. The theme to Only Fools and Horses is just outside the Top 20, as is the music from The Exorcist: Tubular Bells, composed by Mike Oldfield.

There are signs that mature music fans are getting to grips with the technology. Golden oldies such as Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynyrd and Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water hover just outside the bestsellers list.

With 700,000 official music downloads being sold each month, online sales will be merged into the Top 40 singles chart next spring. But record companies are wary of incorporating downloads into the rundown.

Ringtones’ profits often go to the artists and the song publishers, bypassing record companies. A 30-second ringtone is not equivalent to the purchase of a three-minute single, traditionalists argue.

The global ringtone market was worth an estimated £3 billion this year and contributed to Britain’s youth mobile phone market valued at £3.2 billion. Ministry of Sound, the record label, estimates that it will generate £15 million of income from ringtones in 2005.

Although the official ring- tones chart is less than a year old, it is keenly studied by advertisers and brand managers to discover which sounds are driving the purchases of millions of teenagers.

Calum Chace, media consultant at KPMG, said: “The popularity of ringtones shows that people will pay if it is delivered in the right way — convenient, virus-free and legal.”