Cellular firms cash in on Christian tones

Cellular firms cash in on Christian tones
http://www.dicksonherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070708/BUSINESS01/707080347

Sunday, 07/08/07
Cellular firms cash in on Christian tones
Music, spoken-word rings help bear
JENNY SONGStaff Writer
If you call up Daniel Dingeldein, neither he nor you will hear the usual ring of the telephone.
The voice of Steven Curtis Chapman, a Christian musician, comes over the line and out of the speaker: "Let us pray, let us pray, everywhere in every way," it goes, before Dingeldein can pick up. Dingeldein, who is 41 years old and a born-again Christian, doesn't care for the usual, mostly hip-hop ringtones teenagers buy. Instead, he has elected to use the music that reflects his faith.
"It kind of reminds me of something I need to be doing on a daily basis," he said.
Those in the ringtone industry are realizing there is a growing and largely untapped market of consumers such as Dingeldein who want to express their Christianity through digital media such as ringtones.
Until recently, Christian ringtones were difficult to find, buried deep beneath come-ons for other options from the world of pop music, rap, hip-hop or even country on music Web sites where such $1.99 to $2.99 downloads are sold.
Now, entrepreneurs have created new businesses dedicated to marketing Christian ringtones, including Christian music snippets and spoken inspirational messages, in a bid to make sales and spread spiritual messages in novel, tech-savvy ways.
Major carriers such as AT&T and Verizon also have given Christian ringtones more prominent display on their Web sites or mobile storefronts in hopes of capturing the dollars that Christians are willing to spend.
"Niche marketing is the way," said Jewyl Gibson, who created Nashville-based Christian ringtone Web site Ringspirations.com last December.
Market has room to grow
So far, Christian ringtones occupy only from 3 percent to 5 percent of the ringtone market at most, many in the industry estimate.
But while the general ringtone market has flattened out — Broadcast Music Inc., a performance rights organization, has forecast that ringtone sales will dip 8 percent in 2007 to about $550 million — sales and optimism for Christian ringtones are on the rise.
EMI Christian Music Group of Brentwood, the largest label in the Christian music industry, for example, says daily sales of its ringtones have gone up by more than three times since AT&T separated Christian ringtones into a major category in April.
Christian buyers are a loyal and driven bunch, marketers have found.
"They spend $3 billion total on goods and services," said Adam Lavine, CEO of FunMobility, a California company that provides applications for Mobile phones. "We thought, gee, there's a pretty active market there; let's get into the category and reach them."
FunMobility launched a partnership with EMI CMG in March to create a "mobile storefront" — an application that can be viewed through clients' cell phones — to browse and buy Christian ringtones and ringbacks. (Ringtones play to the cell phone owner, signaling an incoming call; ringbacks, also called answertones, play to the caller as he or she waits for an answer.)
Mobile Streams, another mobile content company, expects to unveil a Christian ringtone Web site called LifeGroovz later this month.
Sellers seek relationships
"People are more actively seeking out Christian ringtones than any other ringtones," said Brian Patterson, marketing and business development manager at Mobile Streams. "The Christian community is going to be loyal.
"We're looking to establish lifelong relationships with our customers. The religious market generally does not want anything other than Christian."
Patterson and others are targeting people such as Alina Smith, a 35-year-old Nashville health-care technician who rarely listens to secular music. She chooses gospel music for her ringtone because "I believe that what we put in our minds is going to come out of it," she said. One of her favorites is "Celebrate (He Lives)" by Fred Hammond.
Although Christian ringtones vary widely across the genre — from gospel music to spoken Bible verses and even recorded messages from pastors — the Christian category holds up because buyers are seeking a specific message. And Christian consumers don't want their ringtones mixed in with others that they might find objectionable or even obscene.
Chase Stockard, 18, a member of a youth worship band at Cornerstone Church in Madison, has about 20 different ringtones in his phone, all songs from Christian rock bands.
"Being a rock star is about sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll," he said. "But I try to listen to bands that put out a good message, who live a good lifestyle."
Right now his phone rings to the tune of "Return from Rome," by a local Christian band called Sophia. Another favorite is "Reinventing Your Exit," by Underoath, a band on Solid State Records, part of EMI CMG.
"I turn my phone on as loud as I can when it rings," Stockard said. "So it's really loud, so (people) are like, 'Whoa, what was that?'" Then he explains that Sophia is screaming, "You are the Christ."
Labels see bigger growth
Last year, EMI CMG artists sold twice the ringtones they did the year before (although it would not say how many). Christian ringtones are selling on par with ringtones in the rock category at FunMobility, CEO Lavine said. He also would not disclose any numbers, saying only that the Christian category "does well."
But even the top Christian artists do not make the top 200 sellers, according to Nielsen RingScan, a tracking service that monitors ringtone sales. The lists are still dominated by hip-hop artists.
The nature of Christian ringtones, however, means they have room to grow in ways the general ringtone market can't, say marketers, by drawing in customers who typically would not buy ringtones at all.
Christian ringtone buyers skew older than the general ringtone-buying population. At Ringspirations, for example, the average customer is over 30, Gibson said.
Thelma Franklin, a 76-year-old woman from La Vergne, doesn't like ringtones, by and large. But her mobile phone rings to the tune of "Glory Hallelujah," a gospel song.
Franklin said her granddaughter downloaded the tune for her. "Some of them others, I wouldn't even want to listen to," she said. "(But) I enjoy this one. It's an inspiration to me."
Pastors join the action
At local churches, some pastors say ringtones and ringbacks can be a tool for reaching out to congregations. Wess Morgan, associate pastor of Celebration of Life Church in Hendersonville, has several snippets of his singing for sale and possible download on Ringspirations.
"It brings people together," Morgan said. "It strengthens each other. And that's what the body of Christ is all about. Anything I can do to help you through your challenges — even if it's every time your phone rings, saying you can make it through another day. That's what it's all about."
Morgan said he hasn't received any royalties from his recordings yet, but the money will go to help pay for church ministries.
Not all churches are on board, though.
Staffers at Belmont Church in Nashville, for example, are skeptical. Asked whether it would ever participate by recording messages for ringtones, media director Dan Wothke said: "If we're going to put that much time into anything, we're going to do something that serves the church body better than a ringtone."
Greg Wilson, 50, a drama evangelist from Hendersonville, said he enjoys Christian music but thinks some ringtones, and especially ringbacks, can be too "in-your-face.""Some of those kinds of things can be real intrusive," he said. "I think our faith needs to be demonstrated, not just broadcast."