ringtone websites

Anyone know or can provide me with any information to get me started... on how to make a ringtone website.

No affiliating or anything.

no idea, but i have been thinking about this aswell..

would like to hear if anyone knows too.

I did a little googling (this sort of interested me too) and came up with this site which looks pretty decent for a start.

http://www.novagorica.com/m4dj/spmidihelp.htm

creating ringtones is easy.

the part im not sure about is how someone can download the ringtone to the phone and then charging them for it..... also creating your own ringtone would be a bit of a pain, especially if you want to have hundreds of them on offer.

Well you'd definitely need a wap site for the downloading part, as for the paying part, still gotta do more research into that! I'm screwing around with http://tagtag.com/site/index.php3 right now to see if I can shed any light on this topic.

i know nem isnt looking at affiliations, im probably not as fussy. those guys are based on an affiliate http://us.mediaplazza.com

I would say the backend applications and hardware required to set something like this up would be a fair investment.

im still having a look round too

not to point out the obvious or anything, but most phones support midi ringtones. The phone companies call them polyphonic to confuse the public. There are MANY MANY sites to download free midi songs, and it's only a matter of time before the general public realizes this.
Why should I buy a "Sir Mix-a-lot" poly when I can usually download a better version of the same song from a free site?

I would think you could get into some legal trouble doing this too. Let's say you made a really good MIDI of a Kiss song, and it got really popular. So one day Gene is surfing the web and comes across your site. Couldn't he sue the heck out of you and demand royalitys?

I think a site like this would definitely have to rely on some sort of affiliation with a company in the music industry, there's no way around it. Its all about royalties now a days. There was a section in the site I was looking at that said it loud and clear:

Ringtones already make up 10% of the total music market and are expected to make up a thrid in the next 4 years, so if they arnt doing it now they will definatly been wanting royalties soon.

From what i just read royalties are currently split between the composer, creater and the publisher with no money going to the record label that pwns the orriginal, because its a digital replication and not using the master in any way.
But royalties do need to be paid, so it would be safer to buy the ringtones from someone else and then let them deal with the legal issues.

i was wondering about the use of copyright? not only the ringtones but the logos. i was thinking that it came from a main repository somewhere that had permission. i would not sell content without copyright permission as stated in a similar thread.

i dont know exactly about the midis spock, i have seen sites that download it straight to your particular model of phone including the voicetone ones. and they work straight away, so im not sure about the incompatibility issues there.

Does anyone actually know the technology behind it? Use of servers or gateways etc? How are the charges made using text messaging?

You don't need any special equipment, Just a server with php, asp, ect..
Place a ringtone & a wallpaper on a website then navigate to the files address in your phones browser

As for copyright... Just because you're dealing with potatoes instead of tomatoes doesn't mean ethics no longer exist.