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Skype to Sell $1.50 Ringtones

By BetaNews Staff, BetaNews

April 26, 2006, 12:58 PM

Skype joined the burgeoning ringtone business Tuesday, announcing a deals with record labels EMI, Sony and Warner Music to sell song clips to customers for $1.50 each. The Internet telephone company owned by eBay will begin offering Madonna ringtones on Wednesday, with more artists slated to follow.

The ringtone business continues to flourish, raking in over $4.4 billion in 2005 alone. Skype hopes it can capitalize on the market by selling the clips to its more than 100 million users. However, unlike on their cell phones, Skype users can already import audio clips directly from their hard drives.

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By Habenaro

posted Apr 26, 2006 - 3:22 PM

Where I work this lady has a different ringtone for everyone in her contacts ... she's put Big-n-Rich's "Save a horse, Ride a Cowboy" on for her boyfriend ... Yep, there's definitely a HUGE market for them. And the Movie, Record and MS want to install a DRM chip to ensure that they get ALL the money ... because the consumer is definitely ripping them off *yeah right* Sigh ...

Score: 0

By templar™

edited Apr 28, 2006 - 9:17 AM

Interesting how you chose to highlight Microsoft there (if that's what you meant by MS). MS has been very careful about DRM implementation so as not to cause too much inconvenience to the users.

The nasty one is Sony.

Score: 0

By beta_animal

posted Apr 26, 2006 - 1:34 PM

So you can go to iTunes and but a FULL track for $0.99 that you can listen to whenever you want, or you can buy a "Song Clip" ringtone from Skype for $1.50 that you can only listen to if someone phones you...?

Sounds like a bargain...

Score: 0

By jsc315

posted Apr 26, 2006 - 1:12 PM

buying ringtones is such a waste of money, but for some reason theres a market out there for them.

Score: 0

By templar™

posted Apr 28, 2006 - 9:19 AM

Yeah. I can never get it (and I'm not even old!).

I find musical ringtones very annoying. Give me the classic 'matrix retro phone' ring tone any day.

Score: 0

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