CANTON REPOSITORY
Cell Phones Become Cultural Statement

Sunday, March 6, 2005
By Lindsay Gebhart

California-based Faith West sells ring tones.

Cindy Mesaros is vice president of marketing at Faith West, which sells ring tones that let a phone's owner know who is calling. The owner assigns different songs to different callers, a kind of musical caller ID. Faith West has more than 3,000 music files. Its target group is teens who listen to mainstream music, usually rap.

BMI, a group that represents more than 300,000 music publishers, released 2005 ring tone projections this month. It expects the market to make more that $500 million in retail sales this year, double what it made in 2004 and nearly eight-times what it took in the year before.

Why will people pay $3 for a ring tone but complain about paying 99 cents for a music download? Mesaros said the two come from different budgets: ring tones from a fashion budget, because they are seen as personal expression; full music downloads from a music budget, which is much smaller.

Mesaros said her company tries to bring over as much technology from Japan as it can market, but some things just don't fly in the United States. She said the Japanese perform karaoke everywhere by just crowding around a cell phone and singing.