Ringback tone? Ringback tone? What the heck is a ringback tone?

Rating: Muzicall and IMImobile to promote RBTs in Europe … maybe

For some strange reason Muzicall and IMImobile can’t quite understand why, “Only two per cent of mobile phone users own Ringback Tones in Europe whereas in regions such as India that number is above 25 per cent.” Here’s a clue. Not only don’t the pair explain what a ringback tone is, they don’t even say why anybody would want one.

Apparently both companies are accomplished exponents of the Ringback Tone with IMImobile drawing from its experience in delivering RBT technology in Asia-Pacific and Africa while Muzicall has established a ‘centre of excellence for ringback tone marketing’ in Europe.

Yet the obvious reason why RBT is doing so well is a dearth of information. To illustrate the point GoMo News searched for ringback tone on the IMImobile site and discovered that the engine couldn’t find a single page on the web site that matched it.

Yet Muzicall claims that in the past 12 months it has grown the number of Ringback Tone subscribers across its managed services in Europe by more than 300 per cent. From what to what?

The company maintains this ‘success’ is, “In part due to the expertise Muzicall has gained from managing Ringback Tone services with numerous operators across Europe.” Right.

Not only are most European mobile subscribers blissfully ignorant of what a Ringback Tone does, they have no clear motivation to want to change it in the first place.

Ringback Tones represent a wonderful opportunity for content owners to sell their music to mobile phone subscribers. Yet it really isn’t happening in Europe.

Rather than concentrating on statistics  – which show that every day in Europe operators broadcast circa 710 years of RBT, reaching 500 million mobile users – they should be out there seeking high profile endorsements.

Pointing the punters to a decent Ringback Tone site would be a good start for this couple.

Oh, and here’s GoMo News‘ pathetic attempt at a Ringback Tone explanation …

Everybody knows how a ‘ring tone’ can personalise their mobile phone. But what happens when you call somebody’s mobile phone? 99 per cent of the time, there’s a boring Bring, Bring sound from the other end.

So what do you do? You take a musical segment that’s been optimised for use as a ringtone and then play that back to the caller until the call recipient bothers to answer the phone.

You can personalise RBTs down to a single calling party. Such as playing ‘Hit the Road Jack’ as soon as your ex-lover calls your mobile phone.

We have more great ideas like that and our RBT consultation fees are quite modest, honest.