Once you're selling songs online, you can bolster your music sales revenue by entering the cell phone ring tone business. Sites such as Myxer and Phone Sherpa include tools that help even the most technophobe musicians create ring tones and post them for sale. (Ring tones are sent directly to a customer's Web-enabled phone.)"Honestly, it's probably the most user-friendly site I've ever been to," says Otero.
The downside of selling ring tones, compared with selling songs, is that the cell phone carrier receives 50 percent of each ring tone sale, which can be initially frustrating.
"When people started downloading my ring tones, I was wondering where the rest of the money was," Otero says.
But even if ring tones don't make a ton of cash for the artist, they can be valuable marketing tools. A customer who hears a thirty-second snippet of a song on someone's cell phone might be tempted to buy the whole song online.
"I often tell [artists] to use ring tones as a promotional item to push digital downloads of full tracks," says Travis Acker, an artist and marketing relations director at Myxer.
"Anything to get your stuff any extra exposure is a good thing," says John Griffin, a country music artist in Nashville, who developed an innovative ring tone business of his own. Which brings us to.
