Ringback
mobilemusicblog.com

A history of the mobile-music era, 2004–2010 — the ringtone boom, the carrier stores, the iTunes phone that flopped and the iPhone that ended the argument. Written from period sources.

The Era Timeline, 2002–2012

Ringback ·

A ruled horizontal line marked 2002 to 2012, with five signal bars rising to a peak near 2007 — the first three solid, the last two hollow outlines — on a dark plate
Illustration: the era as a signal-bar timeline, rising to 2007 and fading after.

Ten years separate the first master-recording ringtone from the last storefront to carry the V CAST name, and this page is that decade in dated lines. Every date below was checked against a period record — a press release, a regulator's ruling, a securities filing, a chart database, or an Internet Archive capture — and where the record gives only a month or a year, the line says only that much.

Call log
  1. KDDI launches chaku-uta, the first real-recording ringtones
  2. Apple opens the iTunes Music Store at $0.99 a song
  3. The ROKR E1 launches beside the iPod nano
  4. Verizon opens V CAST Music at $1.99 over the air
  5. The iPhone is announced; the carrier-store argument ends
  6. Apple announces the whole iTunes catalogue going DRM-free
  7. V CAST Video, the brand's last storefront, goes dark
$1,200,000,000 → $100,000,000
US ringtone revenue, 2007 peak to five years later · Stat Significant

2002 — The era opens with a portal and a clip

Vodafone switches on Vodafone live! in eight countries — the picture-and-download portal that becomes European carriers' storefront model.
KDDI's au brand launches Chaku-uta in Japan: 15-to-30-second clips of the actual recording sold as ringtones, the first commercial sale of master-recording ringtones anywhere.

2003 — The $0.99 comparator arrives

Apple opens the iTunes Music Store: 200,000 songs at $0.99, over one million sold in the first week.
iTunes ships for Windows, and the store's addressable market becomes most of the world's PCs.
Chaku-uta passes 44 million downloads in under a year, per figures KDDI reported at the end of November.

2004 — The deals are signed and the money shows up

VeriSign completes its $273 million purchase of Jamba, the Berlin ringtone merchant trading abroad as Jamster.
Motorola and Apple announce iTunes is coming to Motorola handsets, expected in the first half of 2005.
KDDI launches Chaku-uta Full — complete songs sold over the air, a million downloads in the first 48 days.
Global ringtone sales for the year top $4 billion, a figure the business press repeats for the rest of the decade.

2005 — The iTunes phone finally ships, and so does the frog

The Mobile Music Blog, a one-writer industry weblog, begins publishing at this address.
The blog posts a “world exclusive first look” at the iTunes phone — an April Fools' prank built from an iPod rubber-banded to a 1980s brick phone.
Re-dated into April 1, the prank draws 31 trackbacks — Gizmodo and Boing Boing within hours, the Guardian's blog as late as May.

WORLD EXCLUSIVE! FIRST LOOK AT iTUNES PHONE · mobilemusicblog.com/2005/03/world_exclusive.html · posted 2005-03-31, re-dated 2005-04-01 · an April Fools' hoax

Motorola chief executive Ed Zander, quoted by the Chicago Tribune, says carriers show “no resistance” to the iTunes phone and that it will ship in July. It ships September 7.
Crazy Frog's “Axel F” — a ringtone mascot's single — enters the UK chart at number one, outselling Coldplay's “Speed of Sound” four to one. It stays four weeks.
KDDI reports 10 million Chaku-uta Full downloads within seven months of launch.
T-Mobile signs an 18-month exclusive with Robbie Williams — full-track downloads, streamed concerts, ringtones — the flagship content for its Mobile Jukebox era.
O2 signs Andy Cato of Groove Armada to supply two exclusive, DRM-free tracks a week at £1 each through O2 Active, as reported by the Guardian.
Apple opens iTunes in Japan; a million songs sell in the first four days.
The blog's Stats column relays Variety's Asian figures: 2 billion polyphonic ringtone downloads in Japan in 2004, and 40 million China Mobile ringback subscribers.

Asia's Mobile Music Market · mobilemusicblog.com/2005/08/asias_mobile_mu.html · 2005-08-08 · category: Stats

A Strategy Analytics test ranks Orange Music's UK full-track download service first in the country, ahead of O2 and Vodafone.
Motorola, Apple and Cingular launch the ROKR E1 beside the iPod nano — $249.99 on a two-year contract, capped at 100 songs.
The UK's Advertising Standards Authority upholds 298 complaints against Jamster's subscription ads and restricts them to after 9 pm.
Sprint opens the Sprint Music Store: $2.50 a track over EV-DO, one copy for the phone and one for the PC.
MIT Technology Review reports an American Technology Research finding: ROKR return rates are running six times the retail average.
Cingular cuts the ROKR's contract price by $100, to $149.99.
Amp'd Mobile, the MTV- and Universal-backed youth carrier, soft-launches on Verizon's network.
3 UK closes the year claiming three-quarters of the UK's mobile-music sales through its 3 MusicStore and portal.

2006 — The American carrier stores open for business

Verizon launches V CAST Music · closed 2012: $0.99 a song from a PC, $1.99 over the air.
Motorola and Cingular ship the SLVR L7, the second iTunes phone — $199 on contract, with the same 100-song cap.
The Mobile Music Blog posts “So Long...” and closes in its eleventh month; its archive moves to the writer's other site.

So Long... · mobilemusicblog.com/2006/02/so_long.html · 2006-02-02 · final post

Helio · closed 2010, the EarthLink–SK Telecom venture, launches with music-centric handsets after raising $440 million.
The RIAA introduces Master Ringtone certifications: gold at 500,000 sold, platinum at one million.
Nokia agrees to buy Loudeye — owner of the OD2 platform behind many European carrier stores — for $60 million.

2007 — The iPhone lands and DRM starts to fall

Steve Jobs announces the iPhone at Macworld: iTunes built in, no over-the-air store, no song cap.
Sprint cuts its store price from $2.50 to $0.99, matching iTunes.
EMI and Apple announce DRM-free downloads at higher quality for $1.29 a track.
Japan's label-owned Chaku-uta Full storefronts pass 100 million downloads.
iTunes Plus goes live with EMI's catalogue — the first major-label DRM-free store shelf.
Amp'd Mobile files for Chapter 11 with roughly 175,000 subscribers and eighteen months of operation behind it.
The iPhone goes on sale in the United States on AT&T — the carrier formerly branded Cingular, on Apple's terms.
Amp'd winds down through July; customers are told by text message that service ends at the start of August.
Apple names O2 the iPhone's exclusive UK carrier. The operator that signed half of Groove Armada two years earlier now takes Apple's store instead of its own.
Amazon MP3 opens in public beta: two million songs, all DRM-free MP3s.
The Nokia Music Store goes live in the UK — announced the day before, the first market for the store Nokia built on Loudeye's platform.
US ringtone and ringback revenue peaks above $1 billion. Every later year is smaller.

2008 — The peak passes on every continent

Sony BMG joins Amazon MP3; all four major labels now sell DRM-free somewhere.
Japan's Chaku-uta Full storefronts pass 200 million downloads — the second hundred million took eleven months.
Virgin Mobile agrees to buy Helio for $39 million in stock, about a tenth of what was invested in it; the deal closes August 22.
Verizon relaunches its store as V CAST Music with Rhapsody: five million songs, and over-the-air purchases now come with a DRM-free MP3 copy.
Apple opens the App Store with more than 500 applications, the day before the iPhone 3G ships.
VeriSign exits mobile, selling its remaining minority stake in Jamba to News Corp for $200 million — two years after selling the first 51 percent for $188 million.
Nokia's Comes With Music launches in the UK: a year of unlimited downloads bundled into the price of a 5310 XpressMusic.
US ringtone sales fall about 24 percent, from $714 million to $541 million — the format's first annual decline.
Lil Wayne's “Lollipop” is the year's best-selling US ringtone, on its way to a five-times-platinum mastertone certification — the RIAA's highest.

2009 — The labels concede the DRM argument

Apple announces the entire iTunes catalogue is going DRM-free — eight of ten million songs that day, the rest by the end of March.
The changeover completes and three-tier pricing begins; the argument that ran from forward-lock to iTunes Plus is over.

2010 — The survivors absorb the casualties

Virgin Mobile winds down the Helio brand and service, two years after buying it.

The record thins here. Between 2010 and 2012 the industry mostly stopped announcing things: stores were folded into apps, catalogues into subscriptions, and closures into terms-of-service updates.

2012 — The last V CAST storefront goes dark

Verizon tells subscribers that V CAST Video — launched in 2005, the last storefront under the V CAST name — shuts on December 15.
V CAST Video goes dark, closing the brand that once sold America $1.99 songs over the air.
US ringtone revenue for the year runs near $100 million — down from a peak above $1 billion five years earlier.

What each closure meant for the songs people had paid for — DRM servers switched off, licenses stranded on retired handsets, credits refunded or not — is recorded store by store in the Store Ledger's “What happened to purchases” column.

Balance — 2026-08-14
Still true
The Internet Archive's captures of this domain's 2005 blog remain readable, and DRM-free files bought after the 2007–2009 transitions still play in any player.
Shut down / gone
Every carrier music store named on this page has closed — V CAST, Sprint's $2.50-era store, Amp'd, Helio, and the OD2-chain stores among them.
Actively wrong
Zander's May 2005 claims — carriers had “no resistance,” the phone would ship in July — were contradicted by the carriers' own pricing fight and by the September 7 launch date.
Not established
The exact closing date of the V CAST Music download store; the launch date of 3 UK's MusicStore; the day in December 2002 on which chaku-uta went live.

Sources

Every date on this page was checked in August 2026 against period press releases, regulator and industry-body records, chart databases, securities filings, period trade press, or Internet Archive captures.

  1. Apple press releases, "Apple Launches the iTunes Music Store" (2003-04-28) and "iTunes Music Store Sells Over One Million Songs in First Week" (2003-05-05), evidencing the opening, $0.99 pricing and first-week sales, apple.com/newsroom/2003/04/28…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  2. Apple press release, "Apple Launches iTunes for Windows," evidencing the 2003-10-16 Windows release, apple.com/newsroom/2003/10/16…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  3. Apple press release, "Motorola and Apple Bring iTunes Music Player to Motorola's Next-Generation Mobile Phones," evidencing the 2004-07-26 announcement and first-half-2005 expectation, apple.com/newsroom/2004/07/26…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  4. Apple press release, "Apple, Motorola & Cingular Launch World's First Mobile Phone with iTunes," evidencing the 2005-09-07 ROKR launch, price and 100-song transfer limit, apple.com/newsroom/2005/09/07…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  5. Apple press releases, "Apple Launches iTunes Music Store in Japan" and "Japan iTunes Music Store Sells One Million Songs in First Four Days," evidencing the 2005-08-04 launch and first-four-days sales, apple.com/newsroom/2005/08/04…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  6. Apple press release, "Apple Reinvents the Phone with iPhone," evidencing the 2007-01-09 announcement, apple.com/newsroom/2007/01/09…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  7. Apple press release, "Apple Chooses O2 as Exclusive Carrier for iPhone in UK," evidencing the 2007-09-18 exclusivity announcement, apple.com/newsroom/2007/09/18…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  8. Apple press releases, "Apple Unveils Higher Quality DRM-Free Music on the iTunes Store" (2007-04-02) and "Apple Launches iTunes Plus" (2007-05-30), apple.com/newsroom/2007/05/30…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  9. MacRumors, "Apple Announces Changes to iTunes Store" (2009-01-06), evidencing the DRM-free catalogue announcement, end-of-March completion and April pricing tiers, macrumors.com/2009/01/06…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  10. AppleInsider, "Apple's App Store launches with more than 500 apps" (2008-07-10), appleinsider.com/articles/08/07/10…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  11. Amazon press release, "Amazon.com Launches Public Beta of Amazon MP3" (2007-09-25), press.aboutamazon.com/2007/9…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  12. TechCrunch, "Amazon Completes DRM-Free Roster With Sony-BMG" (2008-01-10), techcrunch.com/2008/01/10…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  13. Japan Inc, "The Debut of Chaku-Uta: A Look at KDDI's New Song Clip Download Service," period coverage evidencing the December 2002 launch and clip format, japaninc.com/mmw36, accessed 2026-08-14.
  14. Web Japan, "Mobile Music" (2004), evidencing 44 million chaku-uta downloads by end of November 2003, web-japan.org/trends/business/bus040303.html, accessed 2026-08-14.
  15. eurotechnology.com chaku-uta archive, evidencing the 2004-11-19 Chaku-uta Full launch, one million downloads in 48 days, and 10 million by 2005-06-15, eurotechnology.com/tag/chaku-uta, accessed 2026-08-14.
  16. Billboard, "Japan's Chaku-Uta Reaches 200M Download Milestone," evidencing the May 2007 hundred-million and 2008-04-30 two-hundred-million marks, billboard.com/music/music-news/japans-chaku-uta…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  17. Vodafone press release, "Vodafone live! – a revolutionary new concept in mobile communications" (November 2002), evidencing the 2002-10-24 eight-country launch, vodafone.pt/en/press-releases/2002/11…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  18. Official Charts Company, "Number 1 today in 2005: Crazy Frog beats Coldplay to the top" and the "Axel F" chart record, evidencing the 2005-05-29 entry, the four-to-one margin and the four-week run, officialcharts.com/chart-news…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  19. Pinsent Masons Out-Law, "Crazy Frog punished by advertising watchdog" (September 2005), evidencing the ASA's 2005-09-21 adjudication, 298 upheld complaints and post-9pm restriction, pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  20. Network World, "VeriSign acquires wireless services provider Jamba" (2004), evidencing the $273 million purchase completed in June 2004, networkworld.com/article/884290…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  21. RCR Wireless, "VeriSign unloads remaining stake in Jamba" (2008-10-07), evidencing the News Corp transaction, rcrwireless.com/20081007…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  22. T-Mobile press release, "T-Mobile Announces Exclusive 18-Month Partnership with Global Mega-Star Robbie Williams" (July 2005), t-press.cz/en/press-releases…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  23. Strategy Analytics press release, "Orange UK Full Track Music Download Service Is 'Top Of The Pops'" (September 2005), evidencing the O2/Vodafone comparison, strategyanalytics.com…a0=2573, accessed 2026-08-14.
  24. Sprint–Samsung launch release via WebWire (2005-10-31) and the Washington Post, "Sprint Branches Into Music With Phone Downloads" (2005-11-01), evidencing the $2.50 price and dual-copy scheme, washingtonpost.com/archive/business/2005/11/01…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  25. NBC News, "Sprint to offer music for 99 cents a song" (March 2007), nbcnews.com/id/wbna17804665, accessed 2026-08-14.
  26. MIT Technology Review, "ROKR is for SUKRs" (2005-10-31), evidencing the American Technology Research return-rate finding, technologyreview.com/2005/10/31/230095…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  27. RCR Wireless, "Cingular cuts $100 off Rokr price" (November 2005), rcrwireless.com/20051107…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  28. MacRumors, "Motorola SLVR L7 from Cingular (iTunes)" (2006-01-31), macrumors.com/2006/01/31…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  29. Verizon news release, "PacketVideo Powers Verizon Wireless' V CAST Music" (2006-01-11), and PhoneArena, "Verizon launches V CAST Music service," evidencing the 2006-01-16 launch and $0.99/$1.99 pricing, verizon.com/about/news/vzw/2006/01…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  30. Verizon news release, "Five Million Songs In Your Pocket" (2008-06-30), evidencing the V CAST Music with Rhapsody relaunch and DRM-free MP3 copies, verizon.com/about/news/vzw/2008/06…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  31. RCR Wireless, "Amp'd soft-launches wireless service" (2005-12-16); Billboard, "Amp'd Mobile Files For Chapter 11" (June 2007); and InfoWorld, "Amp'd is latest mobile niche casualty" (July 2007), evidencing the launch, the 2007-06-01 filing, the subscriber count and the July wind-down, rcrwireless.com/20051216…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  32. Deseret News, "Virgin Mobile to buy Helio for $39 million" (2008-06-30), and Virgin Mobile USA Form 8-K/A (SEC), evidencing the deal and its 2008-08-22 completion, sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001396546…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  33. Light Reading, "What the Helio? MVNO Is Back After First Flop," evidencing the May 2006 launch, the $440 million raised, and the May 2010 shutdown, lightreading.com…what-the-helio, accessed 2026-08-14.
  34. All About Symbian, "Nokia acquire Loudeye for music service platform" (August 2006), and the Loudeye closing press release filed with the SEC, evidencing the 2006-08-08 agreement and $60 million price, allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/4169…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  35. Nokia press releases via GlobeNewswire: "The Nokia Music Store – your music, your way" (2007-08-29), "Nokia Music Store goes live in the UK" (2007-10-31, announcing the store's 2007-11-01 opening), and "Nokia launches pioneering 'Comes With Music' digital entertainment service" (2008-10-02, with UK sales from October 16), globenewswire.com/news-release/2007/10/31…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  36. RIAA Gold & Platinum program records, evidencing the 2006 introduction of Master Ringtone certifications and "Lollipop"'s five-times-platinum mastertone award, riaa.com/gold-platinum, accessed 2026-08-14.
  37. CNN, "Whatever happened to the ringtone?" (2013), evidencing the $4 billion global 2004 figure, cnn.com/2013/05/09/tech/mobile…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  38. Stat Significant, "The Rise and Fall of Music Ringtones: A Statistical Analysis" (2025), evidencing the 2007 US peak and the fall to roughly $100 million within five years, statsignificant.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-music-ringtones, accessed 2026-08-14.
  39. Music Ally, "Ringtone sales declined 24% in 2008 versus 2007" (2009), evidencing the $714 million to $541 million fall, musically.com/2009/08/09…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  40. Mobile News, "Decade of Three," evidencing 3 UK's end-of-2005 claim to 75 percent of UK mobile-music sales, mobilenewscwp.co.uk/Features/article…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  41. AllThingsD, "Verizon Shutting Down the Mobile Video Service It Launched Back in 2005" (2012-12-03), and VentureBeat, "Verizon Wireless kills off its Vcast video service" (2012-12-03), evidencing the December 15 shutdown, allthingsd.com/20121203…, accessed 2026-08-14.
  42. Internet Archive captures of mobilemusicblog.com, evidencing the blog's March 2005 start, the prank's two datings, the 2005-05-19 Zander post and its Chicago Tribune quotes, the July 2005 O2–Cato item as reported from the Guardian, the 2005-08-08 Stats post relaying Variety's Asian figures, and the 2006-02-02 closure: homepage, 2005-03-31; March prank URL; April prank URL with trackbacks; "Carriers Love iTunes Phone"; July 2005 archive; "Asia's Mobile Music Market"; "So Long...". All accessed 2026-08-14.