RIAA introduces gold & platinum statuses for mobile Ringtones

16 Jun 06 00:35 by Seán Byrne in category Uncategorized To news archive

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Despite the high price mobile phone operators and content providers charge for Ringtones, they have been selling like hotcakes since the time downloadable Ringtones first became available for mobile phones. Now it has come to the point where the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has decided to start introducing Gold, Platinum and Multi-platinum statuses for mobile phone Ringtones based on which sales rank it enters. Up until now, they have only been giving out Gold and Platinum-record statuses to top selling albums.

The RIAA has set the following ranks for each status: Gold status for 500,000 downloads, Platinum status for 1 million downloads and Multi-platinum status for 2 million and greater. Polyphonic and monophonic Ringtones are excluded from certification. So far, the RIAA has certified 128 Ringtone titles, each with one of these three statuses. The RIAA aims to use this as a method to honour the artists with the highest success and have already issued several plaques that bear phones etched in gold or platinum depending on the status the artist received for their Rintone.

src="http://www.cdfreaks.com/contentimages/newsimages/1007644057" align=right border=0
>The Recording Industry Association of America is expanding its repertoire.

The organization responsible for doling out gold and platinum-record status to top-selling albums announced Wednesday that it would start recognizing ringtone sales in a similar way.

So far, the RIAA has certified 128 titles as either gold (500,000 downloads), platinum (1 million) or multi-platinum (starting at 2 million). The ringtones considered are called Master Ringtones, ones that utilize the actual music and vocals of the artist’s original song, not the beep-style versions available for phones without more melodious capabilities.

The full article href="http://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,19271,00.html" target=_new>can
be read here.

With such a high price charged by most providers for Ringtones, it is hard to believe how well they continue to sell. In fact, when someone buys a Ringtone, they are actually paying up to €5 (here in Ireland) for around 10 seconds of a song! On the other hand, all a consumer has to do is send a text message to a certain number and they get the Ringtone then & there. However, most consumers are willing to spend anything to stand out from the crowd and a customised Ringtone is just one of these ways.

Source: E! Online News

14 Comments

ominus: Posts: 49; Posted on: 16 Jun 06 08:40

**However, most consumers are willing to spend anything to stand out from the crowd and a customised Ringtone is just one of these ways. ** u just hit the nail here. ah the stupidity of the human race...

ominus: Posts: 49; Posted on: 16 Jun 06 08:40

double post
[edited by ominus on 16.06.2006 08:41]

divadiow: Posts: 60; Posted on: 16 Jun 06 10:28

im glad im not retarded enough to pay for a ringtone.

CORRSA: Posts: 298; Posted on: 16 Jun 06 11:50

whats a ringtone ?

divadiow: Posts: 60; Posted on: 16 Jun 06 14:42

seriously?

Zzyzxroad: Posts: 146; Posted on: 16 Jun 06 15:39

A ringtone is when your older brother slaps you upside the head, and you have a ringing tone in your ear for hours.

LastStand: Posts: 321; Posted on: 16 Jun 06 17:32

Ringtones are a rip off, which is why the riaa loves them.

nytvd: Posts: 256; Posted on: 16 Jun 06 20:39

two words - bitpim & audacity

petera: Posts: 892; Posted on: 16 Jun 06 21:48

How about three words :- Nero Wave Editor

themushroom: Posts: 188; Posted on: 16 Jun 06 23:27

> most consumers are willing to spend anything to stand out from the crowd Having a cell phone that plays customizable ringtones makes them "one of the crowd"... and as has been said above (heheheh, Nero Wave Editor, heh!) not everyone realizes they can use music they already own and not pay as much for under 30 seconds of one song as they would for 1/2 - 1/3 of the album. Pure profit to your cell providers and music labels, yo!

deezus: Posts: 40; Posted on: 16 Jun 06 23:43

haha...if you own the razr from cingular you can make your own ringtones from any mp3...you can cut out any part of any mp3 song or otherwise...haha pay for ringtones...that is way lame get with the future...

Tremo: Posts: 300; Posted on: 17 Jun 06 06:51

OK, once you use Nero to edit the mp3 and select the part you want to use as a ringtone, how do you get it into the phone? Also, how to make the older style polyphonic ringtones?

deezus: Posts: 40; Posted on: 17 Jun 06 08:17

You have to have have motorola phonetools 3.21 or later...it is software that works with the razr[and other phones] and you also need a mini usb to usb cable........you can find it at the motorola website or maybe get it from a very sharing "BEAR"....good luck...

BaRtMaN42: Posts: 33; Posted on: 17 Jun 06 08:53

You can have custom ringtones on ANY recent phone. By recent I mean mp3 support. After you cut out a part of a son with Nero Wave Editor/Audacity/whatever you can encode it in mp3. But some phones (notably Vodafone branded) won't let you use mp3 as ringtones beacuse of their stupid DRM. So you download a converter between mp3/wav to amr. Amr is also used for encoding your speech when you talk to someone over your phone. Mine even records speech into amr. It's not very good quality wise (because the telephone line is designed to carry only certain frequencies). But amr can work very well if you can't use mp3s as ringtones. After that you need to get the thing into your phone: - IrDA - Bluetooth - cable - internet (most modern phones have a html browser so you just upload the ringtone to a server and then type the address in your phone) Things could be more simple! :X

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RIAA introduces gold & platinum statuses for mobile Ringtones

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