Ringtones no longer ringing the tills
The days of making easy money from ringtones short clips of music for mobile phones are over.
What has been a hugely profitable business is coming under pressure from a narrowing of the craze to a smaller group of mostly younger people, a shift in the nature of ringtones themselves, and growing competition among distributors.
In the UK and other European countries, where the fad first took hold, many of the people who once paid￡2 ($3.5) or more for a 10-second clip have given up buying ringtones, said Chris Jones, an analyst at Canalys, a technology industry consultancy: People were doing it because it was a new thing to do. That has worn off with a big part of the market. In the US, where the business is at a much earlier stage, the craze appears to have stalled even before it has reached a mass market. Only about one in 10 mobile subscribers is buying ringtones. That is the same proportion as a year ago, according to InfoSpace, a US ringtone company that claims 47 percent of the US market, though it adds that reliable statistics about the market are difficult to come by.
At the same time, the new band of distributors that sprang up to sell ringtones is finding the fat profits much harder to come by. Users are starting to switch away from the familiar polyphonic renditions of famous tunes to short clips of the original music known in the industry as truetones or realtones.
Most of the profits from these go straight to the record labels, not the middlemen who made a killing from earlier, cruder versions.
一、参考译文
全球手机音乐铃声市场萎缩
靠一小段手机音乐铃声轻松赚钱的日子已经过去了。
这一迄今利润丰厚的业务正面临压力，原因包括：对铃声狂热的群体在缩小，目前多数是年纪比较小的人；铃声的性质发生了变化；以及经销商之间的竞争日益加剧。
高科技行业咨询公司Canalys分析师克里斯·琼斯（Chris Jones）说，英国和其它欧洲国家是手机铃声热潮的发源地，这里的许多年轻人此前曾为了一段10秒钟的铃声花上2英镑（合3.5美元）或更多钱，现在他们不再购买铃声。“人们当时这么做，是因为它是个新鲜事物。现在人们对此兴趣逐渐淡薄，很大一块市场随之消失。”在美国，手机铃声业务还处在相当初级的阶段，铃声热潮甚至在席卷大众市场前就已停滞不前。仅有十分之一的手机用户在购买音乐铃声。美国手机铃声公司InfoSpace称，这一比例与一年前相同，尽管它补充指出，难以取得关于这一市场的可靠数据。InfoSpace据称占据美国47%的铃声市场。
同时，出现一批新的铃声经销商，它们正逐渐发现，现在要实现高额利润比以前难多了。用户从熟悉的著名曲子的“和弦”演奏转向原版的音乐短片断，后者在业内称为“真实铃声”（truetone）或“原音铃声”（realtone）。
来自这些铃声的大部分利润直接进了唱片公司的口袋，而不是中间商。此前这些中间商依靠比较粗糙的铃声赚了一大笔钱。
