While the rest of the music industry is in a paranoid funk over piracy and declining revenues, one sector has been calmly and unobtrusively raking it in – mobile ring tones. Last year, sales of these 10-20 sec pieces of condensed pop exceeded $6 billion.
So it comes as no surprise to hear that a German electro outfit called Super Smart recently became the first band to release an entire album exclusively as ring tones. (At 10-20 sec a track, it is also one of the shortest ever recorded.) According to the press release that accompanied this “event”, it amounted to such a “radical” assault on the music establishment, that the band were forced to wear giant panda heads to conceal their identities…
Yeah, right… More likely they need to hide the fact that they’re a gaggle of pony-tailed apparatchiks from the marketing department of the label that brought out the album… Until May 10, it can be downloaded as a free set of mp3 from the GoFresh Mobile Music site.