(1888PressRelease)
November 20, 2007 - Los Angeles, California – LilTone, Inc., a startup mobile entertainment customization and delivery provider, today announced the launch of Liltone.com, a website that enables U.S. mobile phone users to create and download unlimited free music ringtones. Unlike other leading ringtone services that charge users on a $10 per month fee, or a $2.50 per-download fee, Liltone.com is actually totally free. The catch is that you have to “make your own” ringtones from MP3 files, instead of downloading contents created by mobile companies.
“Today’s mobile phone users are more sophisticated and downloading an annoying frog singing on your phone is so 2005. We want to give the consumers the choice of creating unique ringtones base on their exact preference,” said Jerry Lee, President at Liltone.com.
With over 210 million mobile users, and half a billion in annual revenue, the ringtone market is huge; yet it is often conceived as one of the most overpriced product, considering that a full 4-minutes MP3 download costs $0.99, while a 30-seconds ringtone costs $2.49? Lee noted: “This is exactly why we want to provide a reasonable alternative to this chaotic industry. Besides, we are not actually selling you ringtones, only giving you the tools of making the tones from your MP3 library. So naturally, our downloads are free, and we plan to keep it that way.”
Price Difference
The other alternative of buying ringtone at $2.50 a pop is signing up to a monthly–subscription based membership, who may claim to give you 10 Bonus or 10 Complimentary ringtones. However, you should pay close attention to the User Agreement before committing to a membership since some of these providers may charge as high as $20 per month for 10 mobile content downloads, plus bundled services such as “Daily Horoscope”, “Celebrity Gossips”, or “Daily Jokes”, delivered as text messages for additional fees. The membership fees are embedded in consumers’ wireless statements; and if you happen to be paying the bill for a 14-year old daughter, this is perhaps the most complicated bill you will encounter today, clustered with hundreds of items in text messages, MMS messages, incoming, outgoing call, peak hour minutes, free minutes, WAP fees, tax, plus a few unknown fees. So, these additional ringtone membership fees become hidden, or sometimes invisible. Not all ringtone companies are bad. You can pay around $10 a month to Jamster or Thumbplay, who provides up to 10 mobile content downloads including ringtones, wallpapers, and mobile games. However, there are certainly quite a few very deceptive ringtone companies charging high fees yet providing only outdated mobile contents.
“LilTone pledges not to charge the users, and users’ parents, for accessing the website, creating contents, or downloading ringtones.” said Jerry Lee, President at LilTone.com. Even though LilTone guarantees not to charge you, that still does not mean you are home free. Depending on your text-messaging plan with the cell phone carriers, the mobile networks may still charge you $0.00 to $0.15 for receiving a LilTone ringtone text message. The U.S. ringtone market is in a bit of mess, LilTone may not be the perfect solution, but at least it provides a reasonable alternative, especially for consumers who have already purchased many MP3 songs.
LilTone Ringtone Wizard Beta 1.0
Liltone Ringtone Wizard is the beta version of LilTone’s web-based ringtone editing software. Other ringtone softwares may offer more enhanced features such as “fade-in and fade-out”, or converting MP3 songs to monophonic/polyphonic tones. However, you would also need to pay an average of $19.99 per copy for popular ringtone software such as Xingtone Ringtone Creator or Magix Ringtone Maker. Despite the lack of advanced features, LilTone beta does give you the most essential functionalities of converting and downloading music ringtones. Here is how:
*Upload a MP3 file.
*Input additional song information.
*Select start-time and length (between 1 to 30 seconds).
*Download tones wirelessly to mobile devices.
“Our program is designed to let the non-tech-savvy users make original ringtones as easily as possible, while still giving them enough features for personalization,” said Noel Lo, General Manager at Liltone.com.
About LilTone
LilTone.com is a start-up mobile entertainment service provider that empowers the consumers to create unlimited music ringtones directly from their MP3 collections. You will need to enroll in the free membership to access the web-based ringtone editing application. The service currently supports AT&T/ Cingular, Sprint, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile users.
For further information on the company and its products, please visit LilTone’s web site at http://www.liltone.com
For media inquiries, contact:
Noel Lo
Liltone, Inc.
Phone: (310) 862-4419
Email: noel ( @ ) liltone dot com
