November 21, 2004
Ring-a-ding bling-bling
"My Boo" topped Billboard magazine's chart of hot ringtones during the chart's first three weeks of existence. This week, Snoop Dogg's "Drop It Like It's Hot" took over the top position, reports The Tenessean
Geoff Mayfield, Billboard's director of charts, says what he calls the ''36 to dead'' crowd hasn't caught onto the craze yet, but that up to 97,000 people — most of them young — are paying between 99 cents and $2.99 to download songs each week.
Sprint is now marketing BlingTones, which are hip-hop beats created by leading producers for use solely as cell phone ringers.
The top-selling ringtone tends to sell more than three times as much in one week as the No. 1 seller on Billboard's Hot Digital Tracks chart. In other words, three times as many people are paying up to $2.99 for a snippet of a replica of a song's melody than are paying 99 cents to download an entire song with full dynamic sound.
''It's a personalized thing, and I think it's going to grow,'' Bihlman says. ''This whole mass of humanity is trying to do anything to differentiate themselves.''
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