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Too many start-up ideas are rather boring combinations of trendyconcepts — say, a social network for hedge fund mangers. But I ran intoone today that seems interesting; it’s something like YouTube forringtones. The site, which officially launches Tuesday, is called Cellware, and it was founded by John Ferber, who started Advertising.com with his brother Scott.
There are a couple of nifty bits to what Mr. Ferber is doing. First,the site offers free ringtones, in a world where most ringtones areeither sold for as much as $2.49 in conjunction with major labels, orthrough various subscription services that pitch themselves throughrather garish ads on social networks with their prices in hard-to-readprint.
The business model is advertising: banner ads on the Web site youuse to pick the ringtones to download, and on the SMS message you needto receive in order to get the ring tones on the phone. In addition toringtones, the site also offers images for use as wallpaper,downloadable games and video clips, also supported by ads.
There is some oddball professional content, a library of soundeffects and some indie rock. But the main point is for people to uploadand create their own ringtones. Indeed, there are some simple Flashtools that let you upload whole MP3 tracks, edit them into clips andeven mix several tracks together into a mashup. These can be tagged,rated, searched and shared in a way that any user of YouTube wouldrecognize.
The site also offers anyone who uploads ringtones or other content a share of the advertising revenue they generate.
Uploading and sharing MP3 files? Isn’t there a bit of a copyright issue there?
Mr. Ferber has a rather interesting take on this. Unlike mostuser-generated sites which post all content and wait for copyrightowners to complain, Cellware has someone listen to every ringtonebefore it is put up on the site for others to hear, so copyrightedsongs can be blocked.
On the other hand, the site makes it incredibly easy for people toupload MP3 files of songs and then send 20-second clips of them totheir own cellphones to use as ringtones. Mr. Ferber said Cellware doesnot filter out copyrighted content for this aspect of the servicebecause it deems that this falls within the fair use doctrine — therights of someone who buys a copyrighted work to use it in certainways, such as to make backup copies of software. Of course, Cellwaredoes not verify that you have actually paid for the song you areconverting.
Using an MP3 file as a ringtone is certainly not new. Some phonesmake it easy, and there is a lot of software available to help peopledo this. Still, the music industry would like to preserve its extrarevenue from ringtones as much as possible. Apple, for example, chargesan extra 99 cents, above the price of a song itself, to use a song as aringtone for the iPhone.
Not surprisingly, the iPhone is one of the few phones capable of playing MP3s that will not work with Cellware’s service.
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