Classical music publishers are ringing up profits

Next time a cellphone rings near you, you might hear Copland’s famous “Fanfare for the Common Man.” That’s because Boosey & Hawkes, the publisher of Copland, Bernstein, Rachmaninoff and hundreds of other composers, has signed up with the Music Solution, a U.K.-based wireless content provider, to make classical ring tones available to the public. For a fee.

“When ring tones were so bad, so monotone, it was just inappropriate,” Boosey & Hawkes managing director John Minch said by phone from London last week. “Now phones are developing true tunes, and it doesn’t have to be pop or some ghastly prepared techno music issued by the software phone people.”

It’s also a $3-billion-plus industry, with the U.S. market exceeding $315 million. The market has grown so big that Billboard, the music industry trade magazine, runs a weekly chart of the top 20 ring tone sales. The music is copyrighted, so royalties are paid to the publishers.

“Traditional music publishers who tend to just trust the tried, trusted ways of marketing the music will find that it is not enough in this day and age,” Minch said. “It’s a huge business in the pop area. For us not to participate, that’s just plain dumb.”