Play it forward: Push ringers new way to customize ringtones

Some high-profile investors are wagering on Emotive Communications Inc. and its “Push Ringer.”
The Encino, Calif.-based company last week said it pocketed $7.7 million in a funding round from Warner Music Group, Bertelsmann Digital Investments, the D.E. Shaw Group and undisclosed angel investors. Emotive said it will use the cash to push its flagship product, which allows a caller to temporarily override the ringtone of the person being called with another tune.
Push Ringers are application-based clips that can feature audio, video, animations, avatars or Flash files. Emotive, which has applied for a patent for the technology, claims it has seen 800,000 downloads of the application by Skype users since the product came to market last year.
The firm is unveiling its mobile prototype of the technology for smartphone users at next week’s IMS World Forum in Monaco.
“Consumers are influenced by their peers,” said Emotive CEO Anthony Stonefield, who founded the ringtone storefront Moviso in 1993. “We are creating the ultimate word-of-mouth network, literally by inserting music and video into the initiation of a phone call.”
The offering, which is available free to Skype users as “Ringjacker,” allows users to create their own voice tones or pick from a library of tunes and sound effects. The content is wrapped in anti-piracy software, if necessary, preventing the person being called from capturing it, and the receiver of the Push Ringer can choose to instantly purchase the media clip.
The potential viral marketing possibilities help explain Emotive’s impressive list of backers. Warner Music Group boasts a broad roster of stars through more than a dozen subsidiary labels, and Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments is a subsidiary of Bertelsmann AG, one of the world’s largest media players.
While the recording industry remains wary of such viral applications, it has begun to see the value in allowing users to expose their friends to favorite bands, Stonefield said.
“Essentially what we’re doing is saying (to the labels), You’ve already got a truetone market,” he explained. “Why don’t we turn around and make every one of your customers a peer-to-peer marketing vehicle?”
Users must download the application to receive the clip, and can manage a buddy list and can choose not to receive Push Ringers from specific users. And users can set the service to quiet mode when they’re not interested in hearing a tune someone else has chosen.
But such precautionary measures have done little to assuage the concerns of some Skype users, who fear downloading the application could result in some unwelcome-and, perhaps, profane-ringtones.
“Why in the world would I want to install a Skype ‘extra’ that lets people change my inbound ringtone?” blogger Dan York asked on a site called Voice of VOIPSA. “I can only imagine working in an office. and then suddenly someone calls me with some loud and really obnoxious ring.”
Emotive’s well-heeled backers are betting that many users will disagree with York, of course. And while it’s easy to see where an unwelcome ringtone could rankle, Stonegate said that might not be an all-bad thing, given the target market of teens and young adults.
“The thing is, we encountered that in 2000 with the beginning of the ringtone market,” he said. “The annoyance factor actually became a driver among the youth.”