The mobile media market has reached its peak, analysts say, and while it’s not hard to see why – the cell phone has transcended its former image as a business item and cultivated a new one as a cultural and social extension of one’s personality – it’s important to consider various avenues that keep the experience fresh and unique. Customizing and tailor-making features, wallpaper, apps and ringtones to suit one’s personality continues to be a big part of the cell phone experience, but matters like price and convenience are starting to make their presence felt as factors affecting sales and user loyalty.
Enter innovation. The advent of the Internet and online-based financial transfer services like Paypal and CCBill have streamlined the ordering and payment aspects of the ringtone collection experience, and integration with such already-popular user interfaces like iTunes has allowed users even faster, more intuitive access to banks of ringtones for their use and enjoyment. Even then, varied online applications allow users to select from banks of sound clips and upload their own to assemble a ringtone of their choice, or upload a full song to a remote server and trim the length to just the introductory bars or the chorus and transfer the finished, cut file to their phones.
One such new service is Cutting Tune. This new service from RealNetworks allows consumers to specify the portion of a song they want to clip into their desired ringtone or ringback tone, as long as the licensing requirements are in place to allow the song’s use. Users basically use their computers to select the song, specify the portion they wish to use as a ringtone or ringback tone, and download it to their handset over the air instead of using memory devices. This can be done for one’s own handset, or gifted to a friend. Several additional options are also available for tweaking the tone before downloading or sending it, such as fade in/out effects and custom intervals before repeating the tone play from the top
RealNetworks plans to make the service available within the second quarter of 2009, targeting operators who currently have music-on-demand, ringtone and ringback tone service from Real. Of course, Real management is quick to responsibly and ethically stress that having the right content licensing agreements ready is central to this new service and its features. Notably, Real is the first in the market to offer this sort of functionality for ringback tones. This mirrors how Real was the first RBT service provider in the world in 2002 and the first in the US in 2004.
RealNetworks senior VP for TPS Americas and Global Operations, Vern Poyner, notes that Real partners “continue to see strong demand for mobile services that allow subscribers to express their individuality,” reinforcing that maximizing the personalization afforded by ringtones and ringback tones continues to be a strong move in today’s mobile media market. He continues that “Cutting Tune provides an opportunity for mobile operators to capitalize on this demand and increase cross-selling opportunities by offering the ability to customize purchased tracks into unique RTs — and for the first time, RBTs.”
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