Coldplay Calling

The iTunes store sells songs for 99p each. Some people think this is too much. But the band Coldplay has found an even more profitable way of selling their music. They’ve signed up with Cingular Sounds to sell fragments of their stuff as ring tones. Fans can fork out $2.49 to purchase a 15-second snippet from the band’s new single, Speed of Sound, that can be used as their phone’s ringtone. Assuming that the average track lasts for three minutes, that’s equivalent to $29.88 per track. No wonder the ringtone business is now reckoned to be worth $209 a year. It even has a Top Ten chart.