From the BBC: Album gets ringtone only release

A band from Germany has adopted a novel approach to getting their music heard by millions.

Super Smart have turned their backs on vinyl and CDs and instead have decided to just release their album as ringtones.

The album, Panda Babies, is published by a German company that focuses on digital music for mobile phones.

“Music has to be re-thought,” said Antonio Vince Staybl, founder of the Go Fresh Mobile Music label.

The identity of the four-piece from Munich is shrouded in mystery and in photos they appear with giant panda heads.

Super Smart say this is because they want to avoid interference from the major labels, but it is no doubt a useful gimmick to attract media attention.

They say they decided to release their album as polyphonic ringtones so that they could circumvent the traditional music publishing machine.

Those curious enough to sample the mix of disco pop and electro punk will only have to pay an introductory price of 1.99 euros (£1.32) for Panda Babies.

“We release songs within a few hours across Europe without interfaces to the traditional music industry,” said Toni Werner Montana of GoFresh Europe.

“Our prices for a ringtone album or a compilation of 10 to 12 tracks including a mobile phone video will settle down at four to five euros and the price for a single ringtone at 1.49 euro (99 pence) in the medium-term.”

GoFresh already signed up 20 artists and last month said it has sold a million ringtones in just under a year of operation.

Phone ringtones are big business, with most pop hits available to buy as mobile phone rings for between £1.50 and £3.50.

An estimated £70m of ringtones were sold in the UK in 2003, up from £40m in 2002.

The release of the Super Smart album was first reported by the online magazine, Digital Lifestyles

Last night was the screening of Death In Gaza (hot docs | hollywood reporter). I’m at a bit of a loss to describe it, honestly. The trouble I’m having deciding what to make of it is appropriate, I suppose; the whole situation between Israelis and Palestinians has gone so far beyond a simple conflict, has become so much more complicated than a struggle over land or religion or domination. This movie is the same. Just as you think you’ve seen one side be hopelessly cruel to the other, so as to gain the pity of all watching, the side which has been wronged responds in a way that seems to stretch any imaginings of what cruelty can be. When a conflict becomes something alive, something that eclipses whatever wrought it in the first place, then there is no easy way to solve it. How do you remove the capacity for hatred from the human soul?

I think James Miller felt the only way to help was to show us how the children — always the most human of any of us — were caught up in a fight they were born into, to show us how ridiculous and unnecessary the bloodshed is, to show that there really can be a way to reverse the tide that kills so many innocents. So he did his best to show us the story, reporting from the worst slums of Palestine with the intention to profile Israeli children next. In the end, he represented the horrifying, frustrating madness in the clearest, harshest, most tragic way. One year ago today James Miller was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier, leaving behind a wife and two children.

Justice for James Miller