CTIA 2006 -- Cingular Wireless joined forces with MySpace to allow indie bands turn their music into ringtones. Besides having over 60 million members, MySpace also hosts homepages for hundreds of thousands of bands (both indie and signed). Specific details of the service, such as the revenue share, were not announced. The resulting ringtones will only be available to users with Cingular service.
Once all licensing has been completed, the artists will then be able to upload a short track of their original song, via an audio file, at which time the music content is screened to ensure content is indeed original and appropriate. Upon successful review, the audio file is converted by InfoSpace into a 30-second ringtone. The artists will then be provided a link so their tones can be posted for audio preview and sold on their existing MySpace profile pages. Additionally, Cingular will give these unsigned artists the opportunity to market their ringtone on MySpace.
The new section of MySpace is called Cingular Mobile Music Studio, but right now the service is limited to trials with about 75 bands.