Not Understanding Ringtone Craze

Yes, I am putting myself in the place where people can call me a cranky old man, or a fuddy-duddy, or some other label of choice.  However, I am not understanding why there is a craze for cell-phone ringtones.

To be sure, it is a big revenue enhancer for the cell phone companies.  They are getting $2.50 for thirty seconds of a hit song somebody wants to play on their phone.  Gosh, if only I was cool, then I would understand the attraction.

For about $1.00, you can download the entire song from a number of Internet vendors.  Why pay $2.50 for 30 seconds of it?  Now for the really crazy part (from my point of view): in many cases, the same people downloading the ringtones for $2.50, have already downloaded the songs  on the Internet for $1.  They are paying twice for the same song!

Oh, but the ringtone is on the phone!  That makes it worth two and half times as much, even though the customer only gets a snippet of the entire song.  Please forgive me for my lack of understanding, but I have not yet seen the reason I would want to spend the extra money to buy a ringtone for my phone.

I recently received a promotional mailer from my cellphone company that advertises that you can now buy ringtones as gifts for other people, even making the purchase through your own phone.  They will conveniently add the charge onto the bill at the end of the month.

For those of you that think I am missing the point, please feel free to purchase ringtones for me, and I will try them out at your expense.  However, I still am not that excited by it.  Instead of getting thirty seconds of the latest song from Pitbull, or some other group, I think I would rather listen to the whole thing.

That’s my view anyway.  If you feel passionately that paying for ringtones is worthwhile, I would love to hear from you.  Maybe someone can explain the craze to me.