A RING YOU CAN dance to.
By Emily Crawford

Cell phone tones peddle individuality to users at $2 a pop -- and users are dialing 'em up

Cell phone ringtones are surpassing downloaded music in terms of individual song sales, giving a giant shot of adrenaline to a once-slumping record industry.

"We knew it was big, but we were surprised," said Geoff Mayfield, director of charts at Billboard.

By looking at the ringtones that top sales every week, Mayfield surmises that the under-25 set is doing the buying.

"How many people my age do you know who buy "Drop It Like It's Hot?" he asked. Mayfield is 51.

Ringtones appeal to kids because a song can be their signature, he said.

"Even if the kids don't buy as many albums as they used to, music is still important them. They see music as part of their identity."

At Santa Fe High, all of the members of reggae band Dub Forward have reggae ringtones.

Dylan Crouch, 16, a junior and guitarist, said personalizing your ringtone is like putting bumper stickers on your car.

"It's my own egocentric way of forcing my personality down people's throats," he said. "For me, it's an identity thing. I think it's funny when 'Let's Get It On' plays on my phone."

A tune just for you

Cell phone companies continue to introduce new services that combine music and wireless technology to allow customers to customize their cell phones.

And cell phone ringtones are the hottest new market in mobile music technology and consistently surpass downloaded music in terms of dollars, Mayfield said.

Polyphonic ringtones are 30-second synthesized song hooks that can be downloaded to a cell phone to replace the phone's built-in ring. The result is something like the Muzak version of a hit song.

Different songs can be assigned to individual callers -- making the caller easily identifiable to the call recipient. Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing" might signal a beau calling while "In Da Club," by 50 Cent, a best friend.

Ringtones are hauling in so much cash Billboard launched a new chart last fall that lists the Top 20 ringtones of each week. So far, the ringtones have outperformed their downloaded song siblings by a ratio of nearly 3-to-1, Mayfield said.

This despite the relatively high cost of the ringtones, which sell for $2 each. Downloading an actual hit song in its entirety from Apple's iTunes is 99 cents and is still cheaper on some sites.

The cost of the ringtones has clearly not slowed their explosive growth. In 2004, $4 billion worth of ringtones were downloaded to cell phones worldwide in 2004. The U.S. market was worth $300 million last year and is forecast to hit $500 million in 2005, according to Mark Frieser, the chairman of Consect, a mobile market analysis company in New York.

Most major cell phone companies offer downloadable applications that allow customers to purchase numerous ringtones for a flat fee directly from their phone handsets, making ringtones easy to obtain even for the technologically unsavvy.

But Web sites selling ringtones also have flourished. Customers can download ringtones from the Internet typically after buying a membership to a particular service.

Michael Regensberg, 19, a part time student at Santa Fe Community College, has six different ringtones that he assigns to his friends and family. One of his favorite Web sites for ringtones is www.3gupload.com, which offers unlimited downloads of graphics, games and ringtones for $10.99 a year.

For Regensberg the attraction of ringtones is getting something new and different for his phone -- weekly, and before anyone else.

"Before, the rings were pretty basic," he said after demonstrating his newest ring, the song "Candy Shop" from rapper 50 Cent.

Big money to be made

The popularity of the ringtones has led to cooperation between cell phone companies and songwriters, music publishers, recording artists, and in some cases, major record labels. Music publishers and songwriters are benefiting the most financially now, but record labels are pushing new technology that allows real or "master" tracks to be played on cell phones.

Once the real voices of stars like Usher or Alicia Keys are heard on phones, the artists and record labels will begin to cash in, too, Mayfield said.

Ringtones are joining the rest of consumer culture in peddling individuality and group identity to teens. Evidence of this can be seen on Billboard's ringtone chart -- most of the songs are also on Billboard's Top 20 most popular song chart and feature hip hop, R&B and rap.

But the trend is not just catching on with America's youth.

Robin Johnstone, 68, of Corrales, is a business consultant. Though Johnstone is not a techie, he said, he has five different downloaded rings on his phone that are not songs but sounds. They include a trumpeting elephant, a fog horn and a fire engine.

Each serves a different purpose, like indicating he has a new e-mail message.

Though he gets some strange looks, especially when his phone begins trumpeting in a meeting, Johnstone said the rings serve his needs.

"It's a great way to personalize your phone," said Jenny Weaver, a spokesperson for Verizon Wireless. Weaver said that the ringtones are not simply for the teenage market.

"Data services have evolved over the last two years, and there is huge demand for it," she said.

In addition to ringtones, data services include text messaging, games and sending pictures from one phone to another. Data service usage brought in $1.1 billion for Verizon in 2004, with ringtones ranking as the most popular service, Weaver said.

More advances on way

Ringtones are just the beginning.

"Real" or "master" tones -- actual song recordings, duplicating what you hear on a CD or the radio -- are now available on the newest handsets. Cell phone companies also are just rolling out "ringbacks," which may soon prove even more successful than the ringtones.

Ringbacks are played over the phone line for a caller to hear while waiting for the party they called to pick up. In other words, your mom can make you listen to The Beatles' "I Want To Hold Your Hand" when you call her.

Like ringtones, ringbacks can be assigned to different callers, which may be good news for parents who don't really want to listen to "Drop It Like It's Hot" by Snoop Dogg while waiting for their teen to pick up.

Ringbacks are more expensive than ringtones, and usually have a per-month cost of at least a $1. They are not widely available in New Mexico yet, but are poised to be the next wave in mobile music technology in addition to downloadable music videos.

Sometimes all of this technology can get confusing.

In addition to ringbacks and ringtones, many teens also forego the standard voice-mail message that tells callers to leave a message, playing a song they identify with instead.

The problem with that, said Mayfield, who has a 17-year-old step-daughter, is that "you can listen to two different songs and still not know if you called the right kid."