BMI Turns To Ring Tones To Collect Royalties

It appears as though the music industry has found a new strategy to cash in on royalties. As music lovers are well aware, at first these companies tried to sue individual users for illegally downloading music. But it is painfully clear that this approach to recover from major financial loss has destroyed their image in the public eye.

In lieu of lowering the price of albums in order to go up against the free music circulating through the internet, the music industry has turned to collection agencies who are now taking legal action against cellphone companies over royalties from ring tones. They claimed that ring tones counted as public performances so cell phone companies should be obligated to pay performance fees. The courts quickly renounced this claim.

After this unsuccessful attempt to collect money, Broadcast Music Inc is now suing T-Mobile over ring back tones, contesting that the cell phone company is selling them without agreeing to licensing agreements. Instead of ring tones, which play out loud when someone calls a cellphone, ring back tones play expressly to the person calling. That is to say, instead of hearing a cellphone dialing tone, the caller will hear a song chosen by the cell owner.

Critics are quick to point out the apparent irony of this lawsuit. If ringtones, which can be heard by anyone around a cellphone, do not constitute public performance, it seems ludicrous to sue the mobile carriers over a ringback tone that can be heard only by the caller. With record companies suffering from huge financial losses, it seems as though they are grasping at straws in order to collect any money that they possibly can.

It does not appear that lowering the cost of CDs, DVDs and other media is an plan that has occurred to the music industry. There are still quite a few fans out there that prefer to collect and own the actual products, but with prices constantly spiking, downloading music for free seems very appealing. Many CDs generally go on sale for about seventeen dollars.

A few bands have bypassed the issue of free music downloads through creative tactics. Radiohead, an alternative rock band, built a website where fans can obtain the mp3s for free, or for a donation. Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor made a similar site. The music industry's unsuccessful lawsuits and declining public image leads one to believe that thinking outside of the box and lower pricing may be more effective than bullying money out of mobile carriers and individual users.