MySpace's Battle of the Ringtones

According to Textually, indie bands with profiles on MySpace will take center stage to battle it out American Idol style for a chance to get their music on mobiles phones. Cingular Mobile Music Studio will offer unsigned bands the opportunity to turn their music into a ringtone, which will then be submitted to a panel of judges who decides if the content is original or not. Once the sound clip is approved, the judges will turn it into a ringtone that artists can plug and sell on their site.

Out of the 68 million profiles hosted on MySpace, a million of them are created by bands, which is why music artists can submit only one ringtone each. Ringtones will be sold for the standard $2.50 on the artist's MySpace profile with 25 percent of the profits going into the band's pocket. The service is being sponsored by Cingular Wireless and InfoSpace, who also launched a service that turns the best 30 seconds of each song performed on American Idol into a ringtone that is available the day after the show.