Hoping to boost slumping CD sales, music industry introduces the "ringle"

It's called a "ringle", the music industry's latest gimmick to boost slumping in-store sales, particularly among the download-happy customer segment. As Billboard reports, the ringle is a CD that contains a combination of songs -- a single and possibly two other tracks -- along with a downloadable ring tone. Got it now? Single plus ring tone, and you get "ringle". Genius.

Sony BMG Music, the label that conceived the idea, and Universal Music will be the first two majors to try out the idea. The labels have about 70 artists in mind for the ringle, to be debuted over the next two months in the United States. (There is no mention as of yet when or if the ringle will be hit stores in Europe.)

The ringle will retail for around £3.50, packing a gross margin of about 31 per cent. It's not quite as high as CDs, but it does allow retailers to cash in on the fast-growing ring tones market.

Comments

[Jesse]

Psh...it's just another ditch attempt to save their market. Which, by the way, is rapidly declining. I have upwards of 300 CDs and have recently decided to go digital with an external harddrive and an iPod. It gets cumbersome trying to haul your freidns, family and 30 - 50 pounds of CDs around. I can keep a 200 GB hardrive in my car with an adapter for power and play all my music off my iPod right into my car stereo. Why don't the music companies recognize this and just start going digital? CDs, like vinyls, are dead and/or dying. It doesn't take a market analyst to realize this.

[shaun]

you can make your own ringtone, why would you buy it