Opinionated comments on mobile phone industry news
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All entries are written by Anders Borg, CEO and Consultant of Abiro, that has a long experience in strategic planning, developing embedded and Java software, usability aspects, and the mobile phone industry in general. You can also read the latest Mobile News entries on your phone via wap.abiro.com, and we provide many News Feeds from popular news services. For advertising and contribution queries, please use the feedback form. News feed (local) FeedBurner Feed
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Monday, August 01, 2005
New songs first on ringtones, then CDs
Boston Herald guesses that this could become a trend, as younger people spend more and more money on ringtones, and CD single sales has decreased substantially.
Also - something no one talks about but is very important to point out - the distribution costs of ringtones, even if we talk MP3/AAC-type, is much less (actually close to 0 if looking at volume sales) while the costs for CD distribution, stocking etc are very high.
The cost of a CD is very little contributed by the CD "hardware" itself (which is evidenced by the fact that a CD-R costs around 30 cent today, which is a more expensive technology than the one used for audio CDs). Most of it is actually distribution costs, so it's painfully obvious the music market must move to network distribution overall. What I don't like is that the technical quality (signal-to-noise ratio, frequency response and other geeky factors) of the currently available music is clearly lower than CD quality. Yet I believe most consumers don't care.
In Korea and Japan they've tried to sell music on memory sticks. That's a very expensive carrier for music, so better would be if music stores introduced "music player loading stations" for those that don't want to buy songs and albums directly via the phone or Internet.
ringtonia.com: Artists release new songs to cellphones before they hit radio
Also - something no one talks about but is very important to point out - the distribution costs of ringtones, even if we talk MP3/AAC-type, is much less (actually close to 0 if looking at volume sales) while the costs for CD distribution, stocking etc are very high.
The cost of a CD is very little contributed by the CD "hardware" itself (which is evidenced by the fact that a CD-R costs around 30 cent today, which is a more expensive technology than the one used for audio CDs). Most of it is actually distribution costs, so it's painfully obvious the music market must move to network distribution overall. What I don't like is that the technical quality (signal-to-noise ratio, frequency response and other geeky factors) of the currently available music is clearly lower than CD quality. Yet I believe most consumers don't care.
In Korea and Japan they've tried to sell music on memory sticks. That's a very expensive carrier for music, so better would be if music stores introduced "music player loading stations" for those that don't want to buy songs and albums directly via the phone or Internet.
ringtonia.com: Artists release new songs to cellphones before they hit radio
