Ring Tones!

This article; "Insight Out: Album sales tell partial story" covers the 7% downturn in album sales, but also looks at new forms of revenue for the music industry. It projects $104 million will be made by the labels from the download of singles in 2005. That's not a trivial number, but what shocked me was this:

The U.S. ringtone market was $300 million in 2004. Labels split the revenues with cellular carriers pretty much down the middle. That’s roughly $150 million in ringtone revenues.

So more money is being made from ringtones than from downloads?! Wow!