Yesterday I was listening to some songs on our friend Kyle Galanaugh's MySpace page and I came across a neat widget called Pocket Fuzz that Kyle was using to sell his songs as ringtones. Of course there are many companies that help major artists and even groups of small artists sell ringtones, but I had yet to come across a program that put selling ringtones entirely into the hands of the artists.

After some research on the Pocket Fuzz website I found hit works and it's really simple. An artist creates an account on the site, uploads MP3s into the Pocket Fuzz system and then Pocket Fuzz provides them with a piece of code to place on the artist's MySpace page and artist's individual website (hopefully). From this widget, a user can type in their phone number, pick a 30 second clip of one of the artist's songs as their ringtone and pay $1.99 through PayPal. The user receives a text message with a link to their new ringtone file and the transaction is complete.

I asked Kyle what he thought about the service so far and he has a very positive response. "Pocketfuzz is working for me. I have found that some people don't really know what it is when they see it on my site. I believe it is because it is new to most people. However when I post bulletins to "DOWNLOAD MY RINGTONES" people respond well." When asked about the number of ringtones sold Kyle said, "In the past month I have sold just over 50 ringtones. I have just under 1,400 fans on my page so the percentage is pretty good."

The artists receive between .30 and .50 cents based on the rising scale of ringtones sold. This is a great way to make some supplemental income from a revenue stream that until now was difficult for regional and local artists to tap. As soon as integrated credit card payments are built in and artists can select their own 30 second clips (instead of leaving it up to just the user) I'm sure we'll be seeing Pocket Fuzz on websites more often than not.