May 26, 2004
Chaku-uta ring songs - New Hope for Music Industry ?
Trends in Japan via Xeni Jardin for Unwired.cc has an interesting article on the tremendous success in Japan of the Chaku-uta ringtone service.
"Chaku-uta is a ring-tone download service that was started on KDDI Corp.'s au brand cell phones in December 2002. It had marked somewhat over 44 million downloads as of the end of November 2003, less than a year since its launch. The service has dramatically grown into an almost $90 million (¥10 billion) market in its first year.
The monthly download count currently stands at seven million. In addition to their originally intended use as ring tones, these "ring songs" are generating new demand as substitutes for rental CDs and as a way for consumers to sample a song before deciding whether or not to purchase the CD".
To fully understand this service, check out Justin Hall's Chaku-uta article of last December, published in TheFeature.com.
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