The Future of Ringtones

Ringtones are now part of the mainstream media market, and have been around in some form for nearly a decade. For many people, ringtones are a fad, and a nuisance, but they remain a significant part of modern life, that continues to have cultural and social relevance. So, what are the key trends shaping the future of ringtones and how can we expect them to evolve going forward?

The first key trend is towards do-it-yourself or D-I-Y. The ringtone market has a history of high prices being charged both for single items (a ringtone can cost $7 compared to $0.99 for a full track music download) and, more recently, and notoriously, subscription ringtone services frequently charge a weekly or monthly fee in return access to a certain number of downloads or "club". However, with the advent of mp3 support in most mobile phone handsets, it is now possible for consumers to easily create their own ringtones, either by loading a full track onto their handset or creating a ringtone by editing an mp3 file using cheap and readily available software. Therefore, the high prices sustained in the past are unlikely to be tenable in the future and the price of ringtones is slowly falling towards zero.

However, music on mobile is moving beyond ringtones, as mobile becomes the default device for listening to music on the move. On any form of public transport you can now see people listening to their music collection on their mobile phone, in a similar way to using an ipod. Already, in Japan, more music is downloaded onto mobile phones than onto PCs. A part of this trend is the increasing tendency towards teenagers using mobile music as a form of identity, far beyond using a simple ringtone. A common site in many cities is for young people to play music out load from their mobile phone speaker as they walk along the street, or sit on the bus, as a kind of "call-sign" or "boom-box".

Finally, as the traditional ringtone industry declines, a range of new innovations are emerging. For example, ringback tones are ringtones carried over the mobile phone network, which are heard by the caller instead of a normal dial tone. A company called Vringo is marketing a similar service which provides an application that allows users to send each other ringtones when they call, so a user calling another can decide what ringtone is heard at the other end. At the moment, it is uncertain whether these innovations will be successful or not.

So, at present, the future of ringtones is uncertain, they could continue to exist in the future, but sold and produced for virtually nothing, with the focus on creating and sharing. Or, alternatively, new innovations may continue to keep the market alive, just in another form such as full track music downloads or music clips to be played on the move.