Ring tones are music to ears of phone users

By Beatrice E. Garcia
Knight Ridder News Service

MIAMI — When Margaret Miller's cell phone blares the DMX tune "X Is Gonna Give It To Ya," she knows it's her kids or her mom calling. A clip from "Crazy in Love" by Beyoncé chimes out when her niece calls "because she's a crazy girl."

"I'm a music person," said Miller, who lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "Everything in my life is about music."

She is among the millions who have personalized their cell phones with ring tones, snippets of music programmed into the phones to play when certain callers ring them up.

Cell-phone ringers can range from the highbrow, such as Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, to the lowbrow, such as the theme to SpongeBob SquarePants, or dog barks and frog croaks.

Ring tones come in just about every genre of music, from alternative and country to hip-hop, jazz and rock. University fight songs are a wildly popular category.

And while some see ring tones as being frivolous and unnecessary — and sometimes downright annoying — these tiny recordings are huge moneymakers for the wireless carriers and the music industry.

Last year, sales of mobile-phone ringers jumped 40 percent to $3.5 billion worldwide.

Ring-tone sales accounted for more than 10 percent of the $32.2 billion in music sales around the globe last year, according to The Arc Group, a London-based telecommunications consulting firm.

Richard Jesty, an analyst at the Arc Group, says: "Over time, the novelty will wear off, but not yet."

Jesty said he expects that sales will remain strong through 2008, eventually hitting $5.2 billion worldwide.

Mobile-phone users can buy ring tones from their carrier's Web site or go to various Web sites that offer a variety of downloads for cell phones, including ring tones, games, screen savers and wallpaper.

Wireless phones with Internet access can download ring tones directly and put them to use in about a minute.

These phones usually can play polyphonic ring tones — which sound more than one note simultaneously — rather than the beep, beep of monophonic ring tones.

Some older model phones not plugged into the Internet can still use ring tones. Usually, the ringer is sent to the phone as a text message.

When Mike Zayas' best buddy puts in a call, the ringer plays music from "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy because that is his friend's favorite movie.

When Mike Lanman's boss calls, the ringer on his cell phone plays the theme from the Clint Eastwood classic "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly." It's Outkast's "Hey Ya" when his 13-year-old daughter calls.

Lanman, who is Verizon Wireless' Florida president, admits to "ring-tone sickness," with about 25 ringers on his phone.

And although he works for the carrier, he says he has paid for most of them.

Ring tones are a bright spot for the music industry, which continues to see CD sales decline and file-sharing remain popular despite a mountain of lawsuits by the recording industry.

The revenue from ring tones is usually divided among the record label, the artists and wireless-phone carriers.

Consumers are buying ringers for themselves and giving them as gifts, via gift cards or by sending them directly through e-mail or text messages to friends' phones.

ClearSky is now working with Clear Channel Communications, which operates 1,200 radio stations around the country, to offer ringers patterned on their music-station formats, such as Top 40 and hip-hop.