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Did you know that snippet of “Milkshake” by Kelis which your cell phone plays every time your boo calls is just like the roll of perforated paper which caused an old player piano to tinkle? So says the U.S. Copyright Office.
Consider: Just 15 years ago, your phone's ringtone probably really was a tone, perhaps even a ringing one. Nowadays though, when our incoming calls are routinely heralded by portions of pop songs (like the forementioned “Milkshake”), ringtones have become a big business. One industry report estimated ringtone sales generated almost $7 billion dollars worldwide in 2006, making ringtones one of the few growth markets in the pop music industry. Billboard launched its “Hot Ring Tones” chart in 2004, and Nielsen — the company best-known for tracking television preferences -- inaugurated its “RingScan” point-of-sale tracking service two years later.
However, as any Daniel Day Lewis fan can tell you, where there's milkshake, there's a fight to determine whose straw gets to drink it, and one of the biggest altercations currently ongoing in the pop arena is the war being waged between record labels and music publishers over how many pennies get paid to songwriters when short excerpts of their songs erupt from your pocket to signal a friend's call. In fact, so bitter is the battle over ringtones, it's caused inter-corporate civil war.
All of this seems pretty ironic when you consider the ringtone industry got its start in a gesture of profitless altruism. In 1997, Finnish programmer Vesa-Matti Paananen released Harmonium, a freely distributable open-source computer program which allowed anyone to generate polyphonic ringtones for Nokia cell phones. Soon, so-called “aggregators” like Jamster and Flycell were selling ringtones produced by Paananen's free software to phone users around the world for a few bucks apiece.
At first, ringtone providers negotiated royalty payments with publishing companies on a case-by-case basis. But starting in 2002, with the advent of “master tones” -- those ringtones comprised of actual pop song recordings — the publishers began to be shunted aside by the Recording Industry Association of America, which argued that ringtones were no different than any other recording, and therefore fell under the compulsory mechanical license mandated by Section 115 of the U.S. Copyright Act.
That license — which is called “mechanical” because it originally applied to player piano rolls -- dictates that once a song has been recorded and distributed, anyone else can make and sell a copy of it in exchange for a standardized royalty payment (currently set at 9.1 cents per copy). As long as a record label pays the royalty and keeps accurate accounting records, it can sell copies of a song -- even against the wishes of the copyright holder! The R.I.A.A.'s position triggered a bizarrely symmetrical internecine rift which pitted, on one side, the four biggest record labels — Sony, Warner, EMI and Universal -- and, on the other, the four largest publishing companies -- Sony/ATV, Warner Chappell, EMI Music Publishing and Universal Music Publishing!
In September, 2006, the battle between the R.I.A.A. and the publishers had reached a head and landed in court, where a judge decided ringtones did fall under the Section 115 license, although her decision left open the question of how royalties should be assessed. Which means the great war continues, each side soldiering on in search of ultimate ring atonement.
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Notes is supported by the Gay and Lesbian Fund, helping the American Heart Association teach heart healthy habits in Colorado.
Craven Lovelace produces Notes, a daily cultural history of popular music, for KAFM 88.1 Community Radio, kafmradio.org. You can visit cravenlovelace.com for more of his musings on the world of popular culture.
Consider: Just 15 years ago, your phone's ringtone probably really was a tone, perhaps even a ringing one. Nowadays though, when our incoming calls are routinely heralded by portions of pop songs (like the forementioned “Milkshake”), ringtones have become a big business. One industry report estimated ringtone sales generated almost $7 billion dollars worldwide in 2006, making ringtones one of the few growth markets in the pop music industry. Billboard launched its “Hot Ring Tones” chart in 2004, and Nielsen — the company best-known for tracking television preferences -- inaugurated its “RingScan” point-of-sale tracking service two years later.
However, as any Daniel Day Lewis fan can tell you, where there's milkshake, there's a fight to determine whose straw gets to drink it, and one of the biggest altercations currently ongoing in the pop arena is the war being waged between record labels and music publishers over how many pennies get paid to songwriters when short excerpts of their songs erupt from your pocket to signal a friend's call. In fact, so bitter is the battle over ringtones, it's caused inter-corporate civil war.
All of this seems pretty ironic when you consider the ringtone industry got its start in a gesture of profitless altruism. In 1997, Finnish programmer Vesa-Matti Paananen released Harmonium, a freely distributable open-source computer program which allowed anyone to generate polyphonic ringtones for Nokia cell phones. Soon, so-called “aggregators” like Jamster and Flycell were selling ringtones produced by Paananen's free software to phone users around the world for a few bucks apiece.
At first, ringtone providers negotiated royalty payments with publishing companies on a case-by-case basis. But starting in 2002, with the advent of “master tones” -- those ringtones comprised of actual pop song recordings — the publishers began to be shunted aside by the Recording Industry Association of America, which argued that ringtones were no different than any other recording, and therefore fell under the compulsory mechanical license mandated by Section 115 of the U.S. Copyright Act.
That license — which is called “mechanical” because it originally applied to player piano rolls -- dictates that once a song has been recorded and distributed, anyone else can make and sell a copy of it in exchange for a standardized royalty payment (currently set at 9.1 cents per copy). As long as a record label pays the royalty and keeps accurate accounting records, it can sell copies of a song -- even against the wishes of the copyright holder! The R.I.A.A.'s position triggered a bizarrely symmetrical internecine rift which pitted, on one side, the four biggest record labels — Sony, Warner, EMI and Universal -- and, on the other, the four largest publishing companies -- Sony/ATV, Warner Chappell, EMI Music Publishing and Universal Music Publishing!
In September, 2006, the battle between the R.I.A.A. and the publishers had reached a head and landed in court, where a judge decided ringtones did fall under the Section 115 license, although her decision left open the question of how royalties should be assessed. Which means the great war continues, each side soldiering on in search of ultimate ring atonement.
-----------------------------------
Notes is supported by the Gay and Lesbian Fund, helping the American Heart Association teach heart healthy habits in Colorado.
Craven Lovelace produces Notes, a daily cultural history of popular music, for KAFM 88.1 Community Radio, kafmradio.org. You can visit cravenlovelace.com for more of his musings on the world of popular culture.
