ITunes Reported to Be About to Start Selling Ringtones

Apple is reported to be preparing to move into the mobile phone ringtones business by offering them via its iTunes music retail platform. The New York Post reports that the service - expected to be unveiled next week - would allow users to turn almost any song sold through iTunes into a ringtone for an additional fee. Apple declined to comment.

One source told the newspaper that the ringtones would be sold for an extra fee, similar to how iTunes offers differential pricing for DRM protected and unprotected songs. Unusually, customers will also be able to select which part of the song they want to use as the ringtone, unlike pre-packaged offerings from most ringtone providers which tend to focus on the music chorus as the most memorable snippet of the music. There are already 3rd party software applications which offer this functionality, but this is believed to be the first time it has been incorporated into an online music retail service.

While most of the major labels are expected to participate in the offering, Universal Music Group, the world's largest music company, will not. Universal declined to comment for the newspaper report.

Posted to the site on 31st August 2007