June 9, 2007
Ringtone sales are beautiful music to bands
With the music industry losing millions of dollars every year to illegal downloading and duplication, popular artists such as Beyonce and Green Day are making big bucks from ringtones -- the melodies or excerpts that mobile phones play when incoming calls arrive. Denver Business Journal reports.
"Ringtones sales are estimated to be $550 million in 2007, according to the latest projections from Broadcast Music Inc. (BMI). The demographic for ringtones tends to be teens and young adults, ages 18 to 30, who are interested in personalizing their phones with their favorite songs.
Two local entrepreneurs are offering young, up-and-coming musicians a way to get a piece of the lucrative ringtone market.
Austin Gayer and Daniel Newman launched PocketFuzz in March 2006 as a way for musicians to offer ringtones and text messages through their Web sites or MySpace. Gayer and Newman assumed the titles of president and CEO, respectively.
The two estimate 20,000 bands already have signed up for the service -- a fraction of the 3 million bands around the world.
PocketFuzz, a playful reference to what the partners came up with when they dug in their pockets to fund their new venture, is available for free to independent artists.
Fans purchase the ringtones for $2 each from PocketFuzzs Web site (which is linked through MySpace or the artist's site). The ringtones, which can be edited from the original songs by the user, are sent and downloaded to the mobile phones.
PocketFuzz shares half of its ringtones revenue with the artists -- giving musicians virtual "free money" for using the service, Newman said.
Fans who purchase through PocketFuzz also can opt to receive text messages from the bands, including updates about new releases or upcoming shows.
... Morning After Records' most popular artist, Photo Atlas, sold about 2,000 ringtones of its most popular songs through PocketFuzz -- giving the Denver band a decent chunk of pocket change."
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