The Premium SMS and RBT Industry, What’s Up? [Tweet Collection]
These are a number of tweets I collected from a string of tweets I made last Saturday, bookmarked here.
Exquisite Tweets from @barijoe
Collected by barijoe
Ringbacktones have made snippets of music into status messages on your phone. Don’t blame the technology.
RBT as a commercial business can exist as a viable music revenue channel alongside other more traditional methods.
if someone says RBT is a degradation of music; well does music have to be enjoyed by only traditional methods, and traditional durations?
and if someone is tying the alleged “degradation of music” to RBT, well that’s just being snobbish.
RBT just enabled us to know how many music fans there are, and what kind of music they like. Market realities.
and RBT has its own segment that enjoys it. So do CDs, digital downloads, and so on. It’s still a recorded music product.
it’s never been a secret that music tastes vary, and that the majority of people will look for easily accessible music. RBT is no different.
for instance: generally, more people would like Westlife rather than Herbert von Karajan. Unfortunate (for some) fact of life.
the pop music phenomenon will not go away, catering music to the masses. RBT is yet but one medium of delivering that music.
This weekend, telcos, CPs and labels are working hard to save the RBT industry they had built, from an ignorant Indonesian government.
Yesterday BRTI issued a letter that all premium SMS services, most likely including RBT, must be shut down.
But BRTI also said that all services may resume; subscribers can re-register to the services they want with no additional cost. RBT also.
Think of it as a “system reboot”: getting rid of users that may have inadvertently subscribed to a service, but keeping the ‘real’ customers
the premium SMS and RBT industry is not dead just yet – but they’ll have to work hard on getting back those customers again.
the premium SMS & RBT industry is not without its own ‘bad boys’; the guys behind the recent ‘stolen phone credit’ fiasco.
and the order to shutdown all premium SMS services, will cost millions of $ in loss of customers, definitely.
here’s the tough question: how many are real customers, and how many were “trapped” via marketing/technology methods?
my opinion: if customers love any service, they will keep using it. If they don’t, they won’t. Right, @yonan32 ? 😀
and the funny thing about selling any service, is that you’d hear the complaints more often than you hear the praises. Same applies here.
but in all fairness, Indonesia’s troubled SMS industry has had more than its share of bad press. Time for a reset.
BUT – the commoditization of recorded music – RBT, MP3, CD – is only one aspect of the music industry.
Recorded music as a commodity is also one of the reasons the music industry has grown so much over the years.
sure there are many ways for musicians to make music, but that also means, if the RBT industry were to stop, it’s a big problem.
the SMS/RBT industry is not without problems. But doesn’t mean an industrywide shutdown is necessary.
the government is taking the easy way out with the “system reboot”. We’ll just have to see on whether they will support the industry itself
the SMS/RBT industry was self-regulated by the telcos. It should have been regulated (and incentivized) by the government.
so we’ll just have to see, how things play out next week. We’ll see, eventually, how many people actually do use RBT.
the approximately IDR 60 billion/week RBT industry will most likely shrink. Will it follow the fate of the premium number?
the ‘premium call’ industry virtually died when 10 years ago after similar outrages from consumers regarding overcharging.
The fear is that the RBT industry will be a casualty of war, of a battle that is actually from overcharging premium SMS services.
so if the SMS/RBT industry were to die a slow death starting today, there are real casualties: the employees of these companies. I was one.
for better or worse, I played a very small part building the RBT industry in Indonesia, so it is sad to see things the way they are today.
the only problem is, with this imminent SMS/RBT industry shutdown, why aren’t we hearing the consumers complaining about the shutdown?
we’ll see, if the shutdown happens, if whether there will be consumers complaining that their services have been involuntarily shut down
so, perhaps it’s time to rethink music services.
Mind Spices 
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