Cingular “Idol” promotion to ship live ringtones

Cingular today broke a new record in music licensing while simultaneously coming up with one of the most compelling multimedia services in wireless. It announced it would ship ringtones made from the live recordings of contestants on hit-show “American Idol” available for download the day after they are recorded.

Normally, making a ringtone is drawn out process requiring endless negotiations over rights, but the unique situation of the TV program aired on Fox cuts through the red tape. Since the individual contestants aren’t signed to any record contracts, Cingular is free to license the music directly from the show, allowing it to produce a highly in-demand ringtone less than 24 hours after it is first performed.

The only caveat is that many of the songs performed are cover songs, the original rights to which are owned by music publishers. Cingular and its licensing FremantleMedia will seek to gain publisher’s clearance the week before the show broadcasts, allowing Cingular to distribute the recording right after it airs.

“American Idol” has been huge hit for several seasons and has been simultaneously become a marketing bonanza for Cingular, which has exclusive wireless rights to the show. In the past, Cingular has enabled SMS voting for contestants and released ringtones of the “American Idol” theme song and ringtones of the songs performed on the show--but only songs performed by the original artists, not the contestants. This will be the first time that Cingular has been able to bring the music to market right when its demand is highest, right after the broadcast, and sell the actual recorded performance of the contestants.

Cingular will sell the ringtones for $2.49, and allow customers to pre-purchase songs the minute after they are performed. The ringtone will uploaded automatically to the customers phone via SMS as soon as it’s encoded. Cingular will also provide a backlog of previous Idol performances in a specially designated Idol music store.