What Makes Up The Cost Of A Ringtone

Contrary to information overflowing the internet and other sources of information, ringtones are not free, they come at a cost. Sometimes, just to make it seem free, the cost of the ringtone is borne by an interested party. A critical look at the process of making a ringtone will show us just what costs are involved and how they are arrived at.

We all know that a ringtone is simply a piece of music. In most cases the music is made by an artist or a group of artistes. These artists are out to make a living and therefore they make the music as an income generation. Even if they do not seek to make their living absolutely out of the music, they do have expenses that need to be catered for. So every time we buy a ringtone for a particular musician’s music we are paying him for his artistry.

Some ringtones are converted from real music into formats that can be played by our mobile phones. People who do this conversion may not necessarily be musicians per se but they are professionals in their own right. Payments are therefore made to them for their time and effort in creating the ringtones. The payments are also made to compensate them for the knowledge they have acquired over time and used in the process.

The cost of free ringtones also includes the charges that you pay to download it. You may connect to a website to get the ringtone; however, your mobile telephony service provider will not let you go scot free. He will levy a charge on the time you spend online or the amount of data you download in the name of the ringtone. The cost of the ringtone is often directly proportional to the size of the ringtone, with the high quality tones being of a larger size than the others. The cost may not be clearly outlined in the amount you pay for the ringtone since it is deducted from your airtime credit and is largely hidden. Also this cost may be very minimal as many telephony companies offer very low data rates, it is still a cost nevertheless.

The creator of a ringtone in most cases is not the same party that ends up doing the marketing, advertising and re-selling of the ringtone. Each of these steps in the business process is undertaken by different parties and each looks to make some profit in the process. As a result, as the tone goes from one party to another, a certain mark-up is added and this increases the cost of the ringtone.

The government is not left behind in the process of making a ringtone and supplying it to the end-user. Business persons have to pay taxes and licensing fees to different government departments on the ringtones and these taxes re mostly passed on to the end-user of the ringtone. Some of the costs are indirect to the process such as office rent or electricity bills. However all these are taken into account whenever one is costing the ringtones.