Philips and Gracenote Launch Music Recognition Service

Gracenote, the information services provider for digital music has partnered with Philips Research to launch "Gracenote Mobile", a music recognition combined with related music content delivery for the mobile phone platform, reports MarketWire via Moco News.

"One of the key advantages of Philips' waveform recognition technology is that it can identify a song using as little as three seconds of music, compared to similar technologies, which can require as long as 15 seconds to provide a match".

Rafat Ali for Moco News points out that "a similar service is offered in UK and Europe by Shazam, but you have to point the phone towards the music source for 30 seconds".

«moantones»

In an article in avn on how pornography will drive up sales of camera phones (though they seem to be doing pretty well so far on their own), Wicked Pictures has come up with a method to stream video – any video – directly to any MMS enabled phone. Relevant to this column is that "Wicked is also investing in a number of stand-alone kiosks where cellphone users can walk up and download «moantones»".

Related sounding erotic tones can be found on inhandmobile Entertainment which offers R and X rated «Moantones™» - a term which appears to have been patented - and just random, someone registed moantones.com - but has yet to put it to good use.

Many people go online via their mobile phone to download ringtones

According to the Mobile Data Association (MDA), many people go online via their mobile phone to download ringtones, which is contributing to the growth in WAP figures, according to Webuser

The five most popular ringtones downloaded across the four UK network operators during November were:

1 Where is the Love? - Black-Eyed Peas
2 Turn Me On - Kevin Lyttle
3 Be Faithful - Fatman Scoop feat. Crooklyn Clan
4 P.I.M.P - Snoop Dogg & 50 Cent
5 I Believe in a Thing Called Love - The Darkness

Free Downloads? Hold the Phone 

Elizabeth Biddlecombe for Wired has written an article on how easily (or not) dowloading applications on a cell phone can be, pointing out that "content that is not optimized for your particular network and handset may not run as smoothly as content that is" and that some carriers, like Verizon Wireless, make it physically impossible for someone to download any unauthorized content to their phone.

Elizabeth also brings up infringment of copyright laws, "copying a derivative work is what you are doing when you download a ring tone onto your phone", unless of course it's from a Website that has obtained authorization from the copyright holder. An interesting point, "there is the additional twist with ringers in that they ring in other people's ears and that could be construed as a public performance".

But there is good news: "There's no cause for concern just yet. By its own admission, the Recording Industry Association of America has bigger fish to fry than the millions of individual mobile phone users.

"It's not something we are deeply involved in at the moment," said a RIAA representative. "Our focus right now is peer-to-peer networks and online piracy."

Good article.

Ringtone Market

Looking for ringtone composers? Ringtone Market has a listing of experienced musicians capable of writing any ringtone from scratch or from a given source (liste by alphabetical order, by country and by format).

In their own words: "For a company starting it's ringtone distribution business, it makes sense to order ringtones from respectable sources (like those listed on this site) than from freelance writers/composers".

Ringtone Market is published by Max Kraynov, from Unwired Tec.

Lord of the Rings ringtones

JAMDAT Mobile is launching a series of mobile games based on "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King", as well as Lord of the Rings ringtones.

Top of the (ringtone) charts

Looking for ringtone charts online, I came across this service from Vodafone Malta.

The service allows mobile users to be the first to the new songs that top the MTV charts by requesting the weekly updated ringtone hit-lists.

"Simply send an SMS to number 689 with the following chart keycode according to your phone make and model and you will in turn receive the top hits of the requested chart".

MTV European Channel viewers can also download hit ringtone by accessing the teletext page on their TV set with their remote control.

Ringtone industry news and press-releases

Ringtone industry news related to mobile music and press-releases from mobile music composers and software developers on Ringtone Market. Bookmark!