Warner Music, Skype ring up a deal

Warner Music Group will deliver ring tones from its vast library to Skype customers, under a deal announced Monday.

U.S. customers of VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) provider Skype will be able to download ring tones culled from songs by Warner artists such as Madonna, Green Day, Mike Jones and D4L. The snippets will cost $1.50 each, according to a Warner Music representative.

Skype, acquired last year by online auctioneer eBay, is tapping into a market that is relatively new to VoIP providers. Ring tone sales, however, have been gaining steam in the cell phone industry, which views them as an additional source of revenue.

"We are excited that more than 70 million Skype users around the world will now have the ability to enjoy content from Warner Music Group artists," Alex Zubillaga, an executive vice president at Warner Music, said in a statement.

Skype said it expects to start offering the ring tones in the coming months. To help promote the service, its online retail store will include a "Featured Artist" section designed to showcase work from a single artist and include a link to a Web page where ring tones from that artist's music can be purchased.

Madonna is expected to appear as the first major singer in the "Featured Artist" section, where people can download snippets of hits such as "Like a Virgin" and "Vogue." Ring tones pulled from Madonna's latest album, "Confessions on a Dancefloor," will include segments of "Hung Up," "Sorry" and "Push."

Why was my previous comment removed?

Nice job CNet...now you're censoring for no reason? Let's see
how long this one lasts.

[kieranmullen]

Why not buy the whole song for .99 ?

Why buy a snippet for 1.99 when you can buy the whole song for .99 on itunes.com ? I didn't think ebay was that desperate for profits? Or perhaps warner is?

Kieran Mullen

Skype - Warner Music and ENDTONES

Congratulations on the Skype ? Warner Music licensing agreement. However, they still have left money on the table? Why? I would like to introduce Endtone disconnect tones?

We all know about ringtones when you have an incoming call. But what happens when a call is over? Not much. In fact, nothing. Endtones change all of that. Endtones notify users when phone calls are over ? or when calls are accidentally dropped. Just like ringtones, Endtones are easily downloaded. Music, voices, sounds and video are all Endtone options. Endtone?s patent pending services are natural additions to ringtones and ringbacks and provide users with quick, easy and inexpensive ways to personalize their devices.

Endtone is an excellent compliment to the Warner Music ? Skype ringtone agreement and represents potentially significant revenue stream opportunities.

[notprintable144]

Need more ringtones?

The windows version of Skype only allows you to use one Ringtone for all your contacts.
If you wish to be able to set a different ringtone for each contact a third party product is needed. To fill in this gap in function Wizztones was made.

WizzTones is a new and easy-to-use software product to use with Skype! With WizzTones, you can assign every individual on your contacts list a distinct and different sound, giving you the freedom to walk away from your computer and still know just who is calling. With WizzTones, the only limit is your imagination.

WizzTones lets you create customized, computer generated TTS tones for your contacts list, Use it’s Sound Recorder to personalized Tones, use Skype ringtones, or select from 15 prerecord tones.
You can find the latest version of WizzTones here
http://www.WizzTones.com