Here's an interesting posting about the marketing going on for the Incredibles movie. Apparently the studio has
- two dozen wallpaper graphics
- two new video games
- three dozen custom-made ring tones.
The incredible part of this piece is that
"Kids pay around $1.99 a pop for downloadable ring tones of their favorite songs--a market that could hit $1 billion in U.S. sales by 2008"
Who knew? That is a large market segment by almost any measure. However, the thing that smells funny about it all is this part:
"The kids are snapping up these ring tones," says Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for market research provider NPD Techworld. "They'll spend $2 for a ring tone when they would rather comb the file-sharing networks for hours rather than pay for a 99-cent single."
My take on it is a bit different - if all the kids are into ringtones, how long is it until the popular ringtones are on all the P2P networks? $2 for a jingle seems incredibly expensive, doesn't it?