Wow…. I was already impressed by the revenue streams being generated by ringtones: the idea is that I can assign some music bit to my phone, and even down to the phone number of the person who’s calling me. When my phone rings, I hear a bit of music that I like, and the phone company gets to charge me by the song for the privilege. The more different songs I apply, the more money they make, and the more my tastes change, the more money they make. Since it’s generally not very expensive to set up an individual ring tone, they get a nice revenue stream that I don’t notice as a significant outflow from my wallet.

New thing seen out on Verizon’s site: ringback tones. Now I can assign basically my own call-waiting music on a per-caller basis: while my caller is waiting for me to pick up, they get to listen to the music I’ve pre-selected for them. Hubby gets something from his favorite band, mom gets “There’s a Tear in my Beer” (cause she likes it and I hate it and I never have to hear it on the ringback tone), the boss gets “Working 9-to-5”, etc, etc. And of course, if I’m a hip thing instead of a mostly not-hip thing, I need to change that music as the music scene changes. Verizon collects $1.99 per tone, with a monthly subscription fee of .99, thank you very much.

Apparently Verizon was the first major carrier to do it, starting in November 2004 (see MobileTechNews article. According to Engadget, a wireless carrier in Illinois was the first with the idea, and T-Mobile jumped into the fray. They’re really big in China, and there’s a whole site (Ringtonia) with news on ringback tones. There’s even links to how to get ringtones of animal sounds, ala “gorilla beating on its chest“. Now THAT would shake a meeting up!