Hey Man, What's Playing on Your Phone?

As it turns out, you can always get what you want. That is, if what you want is a particular Rolling Stones ringtone. Xingtone will make it so.

Given that the popularity of ringtones is supposedly predicated on the concept of enabling subscribers to uniquely personalize their wireless phones, the paucity of ringtones actually available to consumers is more than ironic--it’s downright disheartening. By and large, carriers and content developers offer a menu of ringtones as uniform and vanilla as the jukebox at Hooters, which is fine if you want only the latest Eminem or Usher smash. But if your tastes favor more eclectic fare, chances are you’re out of luck.

Xingtone understands. In fact, president Brad Zutaut co-founded the company largely as a result of his frustration at the dearth of available ringtones from the band Devo. Xingtone’s software enables listeners to bypass the Top 40 to create their own ringtones, trimming and shaping 30-second clips to their exact specifications. And it doesn’t matter whether the source material is a gravity-defying John Coltrane solo, a blood-curdling Rob Halford scream from an old Judas Priest record or the full 23 seconds of the Beatles’ “Her Majesty”--either way, “Xingtone allows you to take the piece of the song that you want,” said CEO Jonathan Schreiber.

Xingtone’s business model is fairly simple. The company’s software is available for a one-time-only download fee of $19.95. From there, subscribers can create an unlimited number of ringtones from audio files housed on their PCs, downloading the finished product to their handset. In early November, Xingtone issued version 4.0 of the software, which now supports about 75 different handsets in all, including devices from each of the major U.S. carriers. Version 4.0 also introduces new audio editing features, including normalization, crossfading and clipping, and enables users to record their own voice and sound effects with a new microphone tool. The software upgrade even expands the number of importable audio formats beyond traditional MP3, WAV and CD files to include WMA, Ogg Vorbis, AVI and AIFF.

It may appear simple, but since its 2003 premiere, Xingtone has been a lightning rod for controversy. Most wireless carriers, content aggregators and music publishers view the company’s approach as a direct threat to the revenues they collectively generate from traditional ringtones, a particularly troubling hazard given the uncertainty of the ringtone pricing model.

“The elasticity of all this is uncertain,” said Adam Zawel, who directs the Wireless/Mobile Enterprise & Commerce Strategies group at Yankee Group. “People are currently paying $1 to $3 per ringtone, but how much more will the market bear?”

Critics also question the legality of Xingtone’s software, arguing that it encourages the same kind of content pirating and sharing once rampant across file-sharing networks like Napster. But according to Schreiber, Xingtone restricts users from sharing files in any shape or form, and only operates between the authorized user's desktop and a single telephone number. Users must also pledge to use only legally obtained material, like CDs they’ve purchased from a record store.

“I don’t believe we should be controversial,” Schreiber said. “That stigma just puts us in a box and avoids the real issues. The ringtone business is not sustainable forever, but rather than intelligent dialogue on the subject, we have controversy.”

And some record labels view Xingtone as an ally, not an opponent. The company announced in March a deal with Artemis Records to enhance CD copies of the band Sugarcult’s album “Palm Trees and Power Lines” with a copy of its software, enabling fans to create free ringtones from the album’s songs. In an era where Clear Channel playlists are virtually impenetrable to up-and-coming acts, the kind of viral marketing inherent in ringtones--e.g., “Hey, man, what’s playing on your phone?”--could prove the push a fledgling artist desperately needs.

“The reality is that companies like us affect the industry in positive ways,” Schreiber said. “We give consumers what they want.”