Regional Mex's Big Ring by Ayala Ben-Yehuda
Billboard Magazine - September 15, 2007 - With Univision Music Group's vast catalog now available as master ringtones and a marketing campaign set to roll out this month, regional Mexican music's popularity in physical sales may finally start to reflect on mobile.
Until recently, about 10% of market-share leader Univision Music Group's catalog was available as polyphonic ringtones through American Greetings. In April, Denver-based mobile media company 9 Squared launched the Univision Tonos application on Verizon Wireless. The move made mastertones and ringbacks by popular acts available on a user-friendly, Univision-branded storefront for the first time.
Since partnering with 9 Squared, at least 85% of Univision Music's catalog, as well as content from Univision TV shows, has been made available to the big four carriers and several lower-tier companies like MetroPCS and Virgin Mobile.
Results so far have been promising: Alacranes Musical's "Por Tu Amor" has shifted 20,000 mastertones since it was made available in early May, compared with Conjunto Primavera's "No Se Vivir Sin Ti," which has totaled 24,000 polyphonic tones in the year since Nielsen RingScan began keeping track.
"Mastertones are the ones the carriers are pushing and the ones consumers are looking for," Univision Movil VP of mobile content and services Christopher Brunner says. "At this point we've got more content available to distribute than we can actually distribute because of the backlogs at some of the carriers."
To make the tones easier to find, 9 Squared has divided regional Mexican ringtone categories into duranguense, norteño, banda, tejano, grupero and ranchera, instead of simply filing it under "Latin."
Univision Movil will launch a campaign across TV, radio, online and mobile carriers to coincide with Hispanic Heritage Month, which begins Sept. 15, and the Latin Grammy Awards. On-air and on-deck promos, bill inserts and text messages to carriers' Hispanic customers will direct them to mobile content from Univision Latin Grammy nominees like Grupo Montez de Durango. (Univision Movil also includes acts not on the parent company's label.)
Other companies are stepping up their efforts around regional Mexican ringtones. MisRolas has begun offering indie acts' tones via TelCel in Mexico and is launching its own application with carriers, while Machete Regional pushes ringtones via codes in CD cases.
AT&T Mobility director of Hispanic marketing Marcus Owenby says that before the Univision mastertones came to market, ringtones by Sony's Vicente Fernandez beat out label priorities on the carrier—without promotion. "It's a function of supply, not just demand," Owenby says.